


Blaze With The Glory

by Steerpike13713



Series: Doctor Ghemor, I Presume? [2]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Angst, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Episode: s05e16 Doctor Bashir I Presume, Established Relationship, Families of Choice, Family Feels, Fantastic Racism, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, M/M, Past Abuse, Politics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-23 09:04:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 46,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12503848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steerpike13713/pseuds/Steerpike13713
Summary: Two years after he was abducted by the Obsidian Order and led to believe he was the son of Cardassian dissident leader Tekeny Ghemor, Julian finally receives confirmation of a truth he would rather were not so, and the secrets he's been keeping become far more difficult to conceal.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a quote from James Baldwin: 'If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.'  
> I had intended to leave this idea at one story, but due to popular response and also the fact that I couldn't quite resist the idea of actually forcing Julian's identity issues in this 'verse to come to a head, have a sequel dealing with the events of 'Doctor Bashir, I Presume'. With elements of 'Ties of Blood and Water' that will make themselves clearer in later chapters.  
> Apologies to any strict gen fans who would rather no romantic relationships were included, but I really do love the way the whole dynamic of this episode changes with Garak and Julian as a couple, and also the whole business of the wedding and who was there and who wasn't is going to be important to the family drama that is going to be central to this fic.

Julian really should have known this was going to be trouble the moment he and Garak got off the shuttle from Mathenis, only for Julian to be called to Captain Sisko’s ready room almost the moment they’d set foot on the station.

“So, it begins,” Garak said slyly, taking the bag from Julian’s fingers. “I’ll borrow this, shall I?”

Julian forced a smile, “Thanks,” he said, squeezing Garak’s hand, and pressing their hands together, palm-to-palm. “I don’t think he can really seriously object – he didn’t when we started seeing each other, after all.”

“When we started our relationship, doctor, Cardassia was not a part of the Dominion,” Garak said, rather mournfully. “Still, the contract is entirely legal, and there are those delightful Federation non-discrimination laws should the Admiralty object. I’m sure that, with sufficient ingenuity, things will be fine.”

Julian smiled at him. He couldn’t quite seem to help it. He was alive, he was free, and three days ago he’d married the man he loved for all the world to see. Garak had demurred when asked if he had any family that could attend the ceremony, and it had felt strangely lopsided, to have Julian’s father and cousin there to bind their hands with fine black cords and glare at Garak when there was no-one there to glare at Julian on Garak’s behalf in his turn. Julian’s own vows had been pure Federation, the only words he knew, the ceremony itself a quiet civil affair on Mathenis, carried out by a rather bored Mathenite justice around a pit of flames, with no audience but Tekeny and Alin Ghemor, who had accepted Garak into the family with more resignation than pleasure, but accepted him nonetheless. Would he have imagined this, just three years ago?

The station looked…well, all right, it looked a little different from the last time Julian had spent any significant time there. He’d returned to Deep Space Nine for debriefing and to prove his identity after the prison camp, then put in an application for a week’s leave to recuperate and all but fled to Mathenis, crisp and cold and open and as unlike the dull grey walls and humming forcefields of the Dominion prison camp as it was possible to get. People still avoided Julian’s eyes as he crossed the Promenade and came up through Ops, but that was…well, all right, not _normal_ , but he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t expected it. No-one liked looking at you for long after you’d just been abducted. He still didn’t know why – it wasn’t as if being abducted were contagious – but it’d go away in a week or two, and no harm done.

“I got your message,” he was saying as he stepped through into the captain’s ready room, “And I know you have every reason to be suspicious, but-”

“Doctor Bashir, I presume?”

Julian blinked.

“That’s me, yes,” he said, frowning. “Um. You are?”

The stranger in Captain Sisko’s ready room was a little shorter than Julian, mostly bald, and wearing an expression of supreme self-satisfaction mixed with annoyance.

“I’m Louis Zimmerman,” the man said, “Director of Holographic Imaging and Programming at the Jupiter Research Station. And I'm here to make you immortal.”

Julian’s eyes flicked over to Commander Sisko, who looked about as wary of this as Julian felt. Sisko didn’t know all Julian’s secrets. Not even Garak could lay claim to that. But he knew enough of them to know how badly this could end, if the wrong questions were asked.

“Perhaps,” the commander said, in that way of his that sounded like a polite request but had all the force of an order, “We can skip most of the theatrics. Doctor Bashir, Doctor Zimmerman has asked to model the new Long-Term Medical Hologram programme after you.”

Julian nodded, and if it was a little shaky, he didn’t think Zimmerman had noticed. “…I see. What would that involve, exactly?”

“I wouldn’t say I _asked_ for it,” Zimmerman said, rather sourly, “I’m sure I could have found a hundred other candidates, but Doctor Bashir was the one Starfleet Medical finally decided to use. The intention of the LMH is to create a full-time holographic doctor.”

That, at least, made some sense – Julian could come up with a list of assignments even he hadn’t wanted to risk, back when ‘frontier medicine’ still sounded adventurous and exciting, where a holographic doctor might suit perfectly – but all the same…Starfleet Medical didn’t know everything about Julian. _Julian_ didn’t even know everything about Julian, and whether he was an augment in hiding or a former Cardassian spy, he was pretty sure that neither would be a popular choice for something like this.

Zimmerman’s mouth twisted. “It’s fortunate that you returned so early – the project itself will take at least three weeks. Quite why you had to take off on leave…”

Ah. This was the difficult bit. “Yes…about that. Sir-”

“I received the updates to your personnel file,” Sisko said, rather stonily, “A little sudden, isn’t it?”

Julian shrugged awkwardly. “Garak was rather concerned that, with the Dominion on Cardassia, his right to stay on a Starfleet-manned station might be revoked, sir. It seemed like there was an obvious solution.”

Zimmerman looked from Julian to Sisko and back again, looking irritated. “Was I supposed to understand any of that, or do you simply enjoy talking over visiting officers’ heads?” he demanded.

“Doctor Bashir apparently decided to elope with the station’s Cardassian tailor while he was on Mathenis,” Sisko said briskly, “If any sort of close relationship with a Cardassian could be seen to disqualify him from the programme…”

“I’ll have to clear it with Starfleet Medical,” Zimmerman said shortly. “Any other little _surprises_ I should be aware of before I begin work?”

Julian caught Sisko’s eye. This would be the time to disclose the rest of it – the kidnap, his links to Cardassian dissidents, the dubious nature of Julian’s humanity even before his augmentations came into it. If Sisko wanted, he could end this with a single word. Julian honestly wasn’t sure whether or not he wanted him to.

“No,” Sisko said, not looking away from Julian. “Not that I know of. Doctor?”

Julian paused. “No, I think that’s it,” he lied.

“Very well, then,” Zimmerman said, getting to his feet. “I should start work as soon as I can, once I’ve set up the holo-imaging array. Captain, if you’ll-”

“Go on. Doctor Bashir…”

Julian nodded. This was the part he’d been dreading. He wasn’t sorry he and Garak had done it. Even without the threat of Garak being forced off the station, war was looming, and it seemed less and less likely that the Federation would be able to escape it. It was a little sooner than Julian might have chosen without that pressure, but when you thought you might be dead tomorrow there didn’t seem to be any point in wasting time.

“So, Doctor,” Sisko said as soon as Zimmerman was gone. “I'm not sure if I should congratulate you or ask if you've lost your mind?”

“Sir?”

Sisko huffed out a sigh, “I’ve looked the other way when it comes to you and Garak's exploits for a while and I've even defended his presence on the station to the Bajorans. But, Doctor-” he went on, sounding absolutely exhausted now. “You could not have picked a worse time to get married.”

Julian blinked. “With all due respect, sir, I don’t see how any other time would have been any better. Neither the Bajorans nor Starfleet Command were ever going to approve.”

“Perhaps not,” Sisko allowed, “But I could've at least said that tensions were low enough to not cause problems. Doctor, tell me the truth. Did you _want_ to do it now, or did you do it just to keep him on the station?”

Julian paused. He wasn’t quite sure what answer Sisko was looking for. “I _do_ want to keep him on the station,” he admitted, “But…honestly, I think we’ve been leading up to this for a while. And after what happened last month, you can see why waiting didn’t seem like such a good idea anymore.”

Sisko stared at him for a long moment, and Julian didn’t know what was going on behind his eyes. He felt an absurd urge to fidget.

“Do you love him?” Sisko asked flatly. “Answer that, at least. Could you see yourself sacrificing everything for him?”

“Yes,” Julian said, before he’d quite finished thinking about it. “I mean…maybe not everything. I wouldn’t give up medicine if he asked me, and thankfully I don’t have to give up my family, but anything else…I think I would. I hope I would. If I had to.” He swallowed. There was no helping it now. But it was what he’d sworn to do, and he’d broken things off with Palis because he couldn’t offer that promise falsely. It hadn’t felt like a lie when he’d promised the same to Garak. Perhaps that was the best he could hope for.

Sisko took a deep breath, pinched the bridge of his nose, sighed, picked up the baseball from his desk and tossed it between his hands. “All right.” He grinned, sharp and sudden. “Just don’t expect Dax to be so forgiving when she hears about this.”

Julian could feel the look of wide-eyed horror that crossed his face then, and was just grateful the captain didn’t laugh at what was, almost certainly, quite a comical expression as Julian saw himself out.

The Bajoran doctor come up from the planet itself who’d been filling in for him in the infirmary during the week Julian had spent officially on leave didn’t finish their shift until that evening, and so Julian was free to seek out Garak and tell him the news. Garak was, when Julian caught up with him, engaged in a rather heated discussion with Major Kira about reallocating their quarters, of which Julian only caught the tail end.

“-huh. Not lying for once. Unless, of course, you hacked the personnel files.”

“And why would I possibly want to do that, Major, when the good doctor is still on the station and quite able to confirm or contradict my claims as he pleases?”

“How should I know why you do anything! Wait – Doctor! Can you confirm-?”

“We _are_ really married,” Julian said, before she could finish. “It was on Mathenis, it _is_ acceptable – well, the ceremony was, at any rate – under Federation law, and we were both entirely sober and in our right minds throughout.”

Well, for the ceremony, anyway. Afterwards the Ghemors had insisted on taking the two of them out to dinner, since the traditional Cardassian wedding feast wasn’t really a possibility in Tekeny or Alin’s straitened circumstances, and plied them both with kanar and a rather intriguing Mathenite drink that tasted a little like plums and a little like pomegranates, and turned out to have a hell of a kick. They’d ended up deferring their wedding night until they got back to the station, in the end, due to a combination of the aftereffects of that much ethanol, Julian’s worries about the thickness of the walls, with his father in the room next door, and Garak’s lingering paranoia that his new father-in-law might abruptly decide to have him discreetly assassinated after all if he pushed his luck.

Kira blinked. “…huh,” she muttered, looking faintly bemused, and made a note on her PADD before looking up at them. “Ok, three sets of family quarters still open…assuming you two haven’t got anything else you’d like to spring on us now you’re back.”

Julian nearly choked.

“What- No. No, nothing else. We’re…not really at that stage yet. I mean…not until the war’s over, anyway…maybe not even then, I mean-”

“What the doctor no doubt means to say,” Garak cut in, “Is that, in our present situation, any extension to the family will have to wait. I hope you’re not too disappointed, Major.”

“ _I_ don’t have any money riding on it,” Kira said darkly, “Ok, you’re in 309 on the third level of the habitat ring. I take it you can move yourselves in?”

“I don’t believe that will be a problem,” Garak said, with a wide smile. Overall, Julian decided, it could have gone far worse.

Moving, for Julian, was at least comparatively quick and simple. All his furniture had come with his quarters, for one thing, and he’d never been the sort to accumulate many possessions. His books were, all but one, on data rods, his civilian wardrobe had been so thoroughly ravaged by Garak over the course of their relationship that there really wasn’t much left to move, and of all his positions, there were only two, really, that Julian would class as irreplaceable. Kukalaka was one. The beautiful leather-bound copy of _The Guiding Winds_ that had been Kaleen Ghemor’s was the other, and those were the last things of all to go, just to be certain that they wouldn’t suffer any unnecessary damage in transit. Garak had rather more possessions – for a man who claimed to have come to Deep Space Nine with nothing but the clothes on his back, he had apparently become something of a packrat since he had arrived – but those possessions he had tended to be small and portable. Really, they were almost entirely set up by the time the door chime sounded, and Julian remembered a moment too late what it was he’d been looking to tell Garak before he’d allowed himself to be distracted by the move.

“Wait-” he said quickly, but of course it was too late by then.

Doctor Zimmerman was there in the doorway, looking even sourer than before.

“You’re in luck,” he said shortly, eyes trailing a little contemptuously over the half-unpacked boxes and still-untidy state of their new living room. “Starfleet Medical have decided that, even in light of your…connections…to the former Cardassian Union, you are still to be used as the base for the LMH programme.”

“…oh,” said Julian, his heart sinking. “Right. Um…thank you?”

“No need,” said Zimmerman, making another note on his PADD, “I advocated against it.”

“ _Former_ Cardassian Union?” said Garak, in a tone that could not mean anything good.

Zimmerman gave a tight, unpromising little smile. “Their decision to join the Dominion has rather removed Cardassia as an independent political actor,” he said, in a tone that probably didn’t _actually_ mean he was enjoying this. Probably he was just smug about knowing something they didn’t, but that didn’t make it any less likely to end in tears. “I take it you would be the new Mr Bashir?”

“Garak,” Garak corrected. “Since the good doctor won’t take my name either.”

Julian gave him a sly sideways look, “You were the one who wanted a traditional Cardassian wedding,” he said dryly, “Strictly speaking, that’d make you ‘Ghemor’.”

The look on Garak’s face at that was something to treasure – like a cat who’d just tasted something rotten, and was now looking for something to claw to take its mind off things. Julian grinned at him – he couldn’t quite help grinning, just then – and had half leant in to kiss the expression off his face before Zimmerman cleared his throat.

“ _Whatever_ your name is, I think I will have to add it to my list of interviews,” he said officiously.

Garak had gone still. “Interviews?” he enquired, in the carefully polite, level tone with which he tended to greet such things as Klingon invasions, orders for a dozen bridesmaids’ dresses that had to be completed inside a week and Julian’s opinions on _The Never-Ending Sacrifice_.

Zimmerman nodded. “I’ll be conducting in-depth interviews with your friends, colleagues, family members, in order to build a more rounded psychological profile for the LMH,” he said, and for all that it was in the least objectionable tone he’d used so far, it was probably the worst thing he’d said all day.

“I see,” Julian said hollowly, wondering how on earth he was supposed to get out of this one. He’d never taken the infamous Kobayashi Maru simulation at the Academy – he’d never expected to be given a command and, truthfully, never really wanted one – but he knew a lose-lose scenario when he saw one, and this one definitely counted. “Well, regarding my family members,” he went on, ignoring the sudden look of alarm on Garak’s face. “…um….would you-”

“Julian,” Garak said quietly, Julian caught his eye, shook his head. This- He’d never told Garak about his augmentations. It was entirely possible that Garak knew already, although one thing Julian had learnt in two years of being Garak’s partner, and four and a half his friend, was that Garak’s affected air of omniscience was every bit as misleading as every other front Garak had ever used.

He collected himself. “I wonder,” he said, trying to make it sound casual, “If you could do a favour and consider not interviewing my parents?”

Zimmerman did not raise an eyebrow at that, but there was a definite suggestion that eyebrow-raising was inclement. “Why?”

 _‘I don’t know if they actually exist or not, and I’d really prefer it if they didn’t’_ was out. So too was _‘I’d honestly rather spend another month in that Dominion prison camp than spend ten minutes in Richard Bashir’s company.’_ On balance, _‘I haven’t seen them in fourteen years and the last time I spoke to them it was to make it absolutely clear that I’d prefer never to see them again’_ wasn’t exactly brilliant either.

“Well, to be blunt,” he lied, “Um…we’re not close, and we haven’t been for many years – and, honestly, you might find them a bit difficult to get hold of,” he added, mostly out of desperation, “ _I_ don’t even know where they’re living these days – they move around a lot, always have – and it seems like a lot of trouble to put you through, just to interview two people who haven’t played a major part in my life since I entered the Academy.”

Zimmerman grimaced for a moment in a way that might have been intended as commiseration or might just have been annoyance. “I see. Well, I certainly understand.”

“Well, thank you,” Julian replied, trying not to sound too grateful. “Um…I suppose I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yes,” Zimmerman agreed. “Tomorrow.”

As soon as he was gone, Garak let out a breath Julian hadn’t even noticed he was holding. “You will forgive me for saying this, doctor,” he said, “But I think that, by tomorrow, we’re both going to regret that conversation.”

Julian blinked. “You- You don’t think he suspects, do you?” he asked, an awful hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. He’d never learnt the exact details of what Sisko had done to ensure no questions would be asked at Starfleet Headquarters about what had happened on Cardassia. He’d rather assumed it was similar to the business with Dax and the Klingons – Sisko had given Starfleet what he judged to be the relevant particulars, and left it at that – but if they had any reason to suspect him at all after this…no matter what they found, it couldn’t end well for the life he had built here.

“No,” Garak said quickly, “No, nothing like that, my dear. But do please consider your audience.” He turned away to start putting away the data-rods containing most of their shared library. “He obviously resents you, for reasons which I could not _possibly_ fathom…” It was difficult not to snort at that, and Julian didn’t even try. “-and now you have handed a man who would like nothing better than to see you stripped of this quite prestigious opportunity an obvious weakness.”

“I’d like nothing _better_ than to be stripped of it!” Julian muttered, “The only reason I haven’t outright refused is that it’d look too suspicious.”

Garak was still for a second, and then, “You didn’t tell me about this LMH project.”

“Slipped my mind,” Julian admitted, “I’m still technically on my honeymoon, I didn’t expect to have to deal with…” he waved a hand, as if to take in the whole mess – Zimmerman, the LMH, and the fact that, Cardassian or augment, his career would be over either way if even a whisper of it were to get back to Command, his freedom almost certainly forfeit.

Garak huffed, and went back to unpacking, and Julian couldn’t help but feel slightly guilty as he started on the next box. Two and a half years, he and Garak had been together and, yes, all right, by any reasonable definition they _had_ rushed into things. He’d never expected to be in a position where he felt Garak had to know about his augmentations – it wasn’t as though Garak didn’t have any number of secrets of his own, after all – but now he was, and it was making him uneasy in a way it hadn’t before the camp. Before he’d held what might be the greatest secret Garak had, and not offered his own in turn. Before he’d seen Garak half out of his mind with terror and still fighting to get them out. Before he’d rematerialised on a runabout after a month of spinning his mental wheels and known, with a white-hot clarity, that he would spend the rest of his life with this man, if he was permitted.

How to start, though? And how much of what Garak loved in him would that revelation destroy? It was not the lie itself, he thought – Garak could hardly reproach him there – but the lie was the foundation stone of his identity, at this point. Take that away, and everything else would come down too. It might not even matter, he reminded himself. If Zimmerman honoured his request, they’d talk no more about it. And if he didn’t…well, there was a pretty good chance he wouldn’t find the right Richard and Amsha Bashir anyway. The Federation was a big place, there had to be more than one couple out there with those names, surely, and they _did_ move around a lot. Or he might not find them at all just because they weren’t there to be found. He didn’t know that it would be an unmitigated relief – he couldn’t quite think of himself as Cardassian, even when he was at his most certain that he had once been Cesnil Ghemor – but it was better than the alternative.

“I’m going to have to tell Miles tomorrow,” he said, to avoid having to talk any more about this. “And…probably Jadzia as well, if Major Kira hasn’t already told her.”

“Do you imagine he’ll take it badly?”

“He’s not exactly your greatest admirer,” Julian replied, a little ruefully. “He’ll probably think we’re rushing into this – I know Captain Sisko does – but…” he shrugged. “I don’t think he’ll make trouble over it, if that’s what you mean. If he couldn’t persuade me it was a bad idea two years ago, he’s not going to expect to have any better luck now.”

The crash, and Goran’agar, had seen an end to that sort of thinking. Even now, the memory of it was enough to leave a bad taste in Julian’s mouth. There had been no call to destroy the work. Miles had done that just to get Julian to leave. They’d never even been able to try it out. It might have worked, and out there, there might have been a bare handful of Jem’Hadar who were free of the White. Even if it hadn’t spread beyond that planet, it would have been _something_. It had taken two weeks, in the end, before he and Miles had been able to have that darts game. There had been a time when Julian had wondered if he’d ever be able to look at his best friend again without thinking of it. Not just the Jem’Hadar who had died stupid, pointless, terrible deaths on that planet, but of Miles’s voice, and how for a moment it hadn’t been Miles that he’d heard.

_You’re so naïve, Jules! Do you really think you’d have had a chance if I hadn’t stuck my neck out getting you fixed?_

It hadn’t been anything really new – he’d been called naïve for one thing or another all his life – but just then it had been unbearable. And the knowledge that that was how Miles saw him had cut almost as deep as that twenty people were dead, not because he had failed them, but because he hadn’t even been allowed to _try_. They’d fought, after that, and maybe Miles had listened.

“I never expected he would,” Garak said, “Or _could_. Although I must say I am concerned about this lack of response – next thing I know, people are going to start inviting me to their homes for dinner.”

“Keiko might insist,” Julian said teasingly, “Since no-one on the station was invited to the wedding.”

Garak’s head whipped around, looking quite mortified by the suggestion, and Julian counted that as a success, even if Garak _did_ recover himself a moment later.

“Well,” he said, in the tone of a cat that had just fallen off a ledge and wanted everyone to know they had done so on purpose. “If Professor O’Brien insists, I suppose we’ll have to. I confess, I would like to see these bonsai trees she is so fond of at close hand.”

“There you are, then,” Julian agreed, “I’m sure you’ll have plenty to talk about.”

Garak looked as if he’d swallowed a lemon at that, and Julian smiled again, and kissed him, just because he could, letting it deepen and draw itself out until he was pushed back firmly by Garak’s hand on his chest.

“Julian. A little patience, please.” Garak said mock-sternly, “We haven’t even made the bed yet.”

Julian smirked, just a little, against Garak’s neck-ridges. “Then we won’t mess it up, will we?”

“You make a compelling point, doctor, except that mattresses are much more difficult to launder than sheets, so if you don’t mind waiting an hour or so-”

“I’m pretty sure no-one has ever taken an hour to make a bed.”

“Since I’ve never seen any evidence you’ve made a bed in your entire life, doctor, you will excuse me for thinking you hardly an expert on the subject.”

Garak’s hand had migrated up to Julian’s throat. He was stroking the side of it now with a thumb, just above the chain from which Julian’s enjoining knife now hung, and Julian shivered a little. The surgeries that had made him appear human again had only amended the outward physiology. Naked, he would and did seem entirely human, but under the skin…he’d side-stepped that issue himself, and would be content to continue doing so until a medical emergency arose that forced it to be otherwise, and a little extra sensitivity around the neck and collarbone was hardly a hardship, even if it had made the high-necked Starfleet uniforms a little difficult for him for a while before he’d got used to them again. Garak had been quite delighted with that little discovery, when he’d finally made it, and as Julian had made equivalent discoveries in turn. The way Garak would twist and gasp under him with a slow bite to the round of his shoulder, or growl at a teasing brush of fingers up the edge of his ribs, and still Julian knew he hadn’t discovered a fraction of all there was there. Rushed into this? Maybe he had. But even so he felt that he was lagging behind, that all he had discovered so far was far too little, next to all there was still to learn.

Between one thing and another, they never did get the unpacking finished.

As it turned out the next morning, there was no need to tell Miles what had happened on Mathenis. Kira had told Jadzia, Jadzia had told Quark, Quark had told Morn, and Morn had told everyone. Which was really all Julian’s own fault for not asking the Major to keep it private, but still annoying, and made the whole process of the holo-imaging massively awkward even without a questionnaire that ran to twenty-six pages to worry about.

“It might’ve saved time just to copy from the transporter logs,” Miles groused in Quark’s afterwards, where he’d insisted on going while Julian tried to figure out just how much truth he could afford to tell in this questionnaire, and just how little this hologram’s personality was going to resemble him if he went too far.

Julian shuddered. “What, two of me walking around? I’d have thought the hologram was going to be bad enough.”

“Oh, it is, believe me,” Miles returned, grinning, “Just as well I don’t go on those sorts of missions if I can help it. No room for a doctor, no room for Keiko and Molly – it was hard enough moving here.”

Julian forced a laugh, and looked back at the questionnaire. “Look at this – ‘please describe your closest familial relationship’! I’ve been here four and a half years, and the only time anyone’s shown an interest in my family was when I got kidnapped over it!”

Miles made an uncomfortable noise and chucked a dart at the board – playing against himself, since Julian was still on-call – but then, Miles had never been especially comfortable with the idea that Julian might not be what he thought he was. He’d flatly refused to believe in the possibility, when it was quietly explained to the rest of the senior staff, and at the time, that certainty had been heartening, had been a welcome reminder that Julian still had a place here. It had been less so when Miles had asked, incredulous, why it was Julian even wanted to go to Mathenis for Reclaiming when, a few months earlier, Julian hadn’t even known what Reclaiming _was_ , and that had escalated into a quiet argument over the wisdom of spending precious leave with someone who had once had him kidnapped, surgically altered in ways it had proven difficult to entirely reverse, and proceeded to get him into trouble with the Obsidian Order. And, presented that way, it had been hard to argue with him, because explaining why it was that he’d wanted to go to the warm, dark little basement flat on a frost-bound world where Tekeny had chosen to spend his time in exile could not be done without first explaining a great many other things, either too private or too painful or too dangerous to divulge.

“He can’t seriously expect anyone to ask a hologram about this!” Julian muttered, and skipped the question. He’d decide what to say there later. Lie, if he had to, probably. He’d already decided he’d have to embroider his way through most of the early childhood questions, and probably at least a few of the ones about his teenage years.

“Could be for- what did he say back there? Extending sympathy, all that,” Miles offered. “Or the anecdotes – though he’ll probably get those from the rest of us during the interview stage.”

Julian looked round, alarmed, then saw the look on Miles’s face and relaxed. “You’re joking,” he said, desperately relieved.

“’Course I am,” Miles said easily. “Why would the rest of us try and embarrass you? You do just fine on your own.”

Julian laughed, and went back to the PADD – the next few questions were, thankfully, just tastes and opinions. All he really had to do here was lie by omission, leave off the Nokel and the Relem and the Preloc and just give his interests as martini-flavour spy holos and twentieth-century jazz and Rumi and Verne. He could probably get away with a Cardassian author or two, he decided, but more than that might lead to questions, with answers that might lead to another protest to Starfleet Medical and much closer scrutiny on Julian than he wanted to attract in a million years.

“So,” Miles said after a few minutes. “You and Garak, uh…”

“Yes.”

“…kind of soon, isn’t it? I mean, it’s been…what, two years? Since just after the Zanthi fever thing, so…”

“How long did it take you and Keiko to get married, again?” Julian retorted. He sighed. “We’re right on the edge of war as it is. So I might as well take my chances while I still can.”

It wasn’t an argument that had much impressed his father, but then, Tekeny Ghemor had been married to Kaleen Dakal the old-fashioned way. Their parents had arranged their meeting, supervised their courtship, and when it was decided that they could, in fact, stand one another’s company, they’d married. Love had come later. And Tekeny had been given reason to fear ‘Regnar’, Enabran Tain’s right hand, long before he ever met Garak.

“…suppose I understand that,” Miles admitted. “Living on the Enterprise felt a lot like that, some weeks, what with people losing their memories and cosmic string incidents and that one time half the ship got wrecked while Keiko was pregnant. And Q,” he added, scowling a little at the memory. “But, ok, fine, so long as you’re happy with it.”

Julian blinked. “…really?”

“I don’t like him,” Miles said grudgingly, “Don’t expect I ever will. But no-one’s asking _me_ to marry him, and after what happened the last time you were abducted I don’t think anyone seriously thinks he’d betray you. The rest of us, sure, but not you. If he wasn’t going to do it then, I can’t think of anything that’d make him do it now.”

Julian winced. “‘The last time I was abducted’,” he repeated, “It’s only happened twice so far, it’s not as if it’s a _habit_.”

“And Garak slithered off to your rescue both times. You’re doing this all backwards, you know, typically damsels need to be rescued _from_ dragons.”

Julian laughed. “I’ll tell Garak,” he said, “I’m sure he can arrange a much better abduction than the Jem’Hadar did.”

Miles grimaced. “Oh, thanks! I slave all morning trying to get that machine working so you can have your accolades, and you put that image in my head!”

Julian grinned, and took a sip of his tea before going back to the questionnaire. He’d just hit another section he expected would need a great deal of omission and embroidery, if it was going to make any sense without incriminating him – as an augment, this time, not a Cardassian, although quite why Zimmerman wanted a list of all Julian’s worst failures was a question someone with a more suspicious mind might have taken amiss. He had enough real failures, at least, to make a few added or altered or at least stripped of their context seem unremarkable in comparison.

He nearly fumbled the questionnaire part of things by handing it in too early, sooner than Zimmerman had expected it. It was a stupid mistake to make, even if Garak found it bemusing just how much that worried Julian. No-one ever complained of receiving a report too early, of course, except…except that it was another of the habits Julian thought he’d un-learned during his first year of the Academy, when there had been talk of advancing him a little further than the rest of the class, since he was doing so well already. Then, he’d known he was overdoing it, and had made a few public and embarrassing mistakes until his professors had said no more about putting him forward. Still, he’d managed to get through it without much difficulty, and Zimmerman hadn’t seemed suspicious. The interviews were worse.

Garak’s was one of the first, and he came out of it smirking and very nearly glowing with self-satisfaction, when he dropped in on Julian afterwards to see if he was free to join Garak for lunch.

“…do I want to know what you said to him?” Julian asked, once they were settled in the Replimat.

Garak raised a hand to his chest in mock offence. “Me? Well…honestly, doctor, I rather think Doctor Zimmerman doubts my testimony.”

“Imagine that.”

“I know! Really, this suspicion of my motives is becoming quite wearing – he very nearly laughed when I told him my suspicions…”

“Your-”

“Why, that you are obviously in the pay of Starfleet Intelligence, of course,” Garak said, widening his eyes so that they seemed huge and blue and guileless in that way of his that always meant trouble.

Julian stared. “…Garak…”

“Well, what other conclusion can be reached?” Garak said innocently, “Very nearly your first action on the station was to gather information on a potential terrorist plot against the Federation, if you will recall. For that matter, there can be few other explanations for your decision to attach yourself quite so closely to the only Cardassian remaining on the station, even against the warnings of your fellow officers.”

Julian was shaking his head by the end of it, and trying not to laugh. “Well, if you put it like that…I suppose I’m also cultivating contacts in the Cardassian dissident movement for some sinister purpose of the Federation’s?”

“Well, naturally,” Garak said, almost serenely, “Unless I’ve succeeded in compromising you, of course, which I can scarcely believe.”

Julian rolled his eyes. “Because you are, of course, just a plain and simple tailor who could not _possibly_ pose a threat to a Federation spy?”

“Just as you say,” Garak replied, nearly beaming now. “I fear Doctor Zimmerman hasn’t taken my warnings at all to heart. Apparently,” he added, adopting a tone of wounded innocence that would not have convinced anyone who had known him for more than a minute, “Certain parties aboard this station have suggested I may not be entirely truthful.”

Julian raised his eyebrows at Garak, who returned another patently false expression of innocence, and tangled their fingers together on the table. Completely indecent, by Cardassian standards, but…well. There had to be some perks, to choosing to live as a human, and rather more relaxed standards of behaviour were one of the major ones.

Zimmerman did not seem to be making himself popular. Dax came out of her interview with him nearly fuming, Major Kira was heard to remark that he was more arrogant than Julian had been when he first arrived on the station, and even Captain Sisko didn’t seem overwhelmingly impressed by the man. Julian almost felt sorry – it was never an easy feeling, working on a station full of people who disliked you – except that, honestly, Zimmerman seemed to be going out of his way to make himself objectionable to people. He hardly seemed to be able to get through a sentence without sneering, and frankly it was a relief that, once the questionnaire was done and the basic physical form of the LMH was set, Julian could go back to the infirmary and not involve himself that much with the technical programming details.

Doctor Zimmerman had been there for almost a week when the next disaster happened. This was unfair, Julian felt. Bad omens ought to come properly – murders of crows, soothsayers, ominous dreams – not be sprung on a person unexpected while they were trying to work. All the same, this one was.

The argonite levels in the station air supply were a real cause for concern – at seventeen percent, only the very old and the very young were being affected, but that was still far more than Julian was comfortable with, especially with those levels rising. The difficulty was convincing everyone else that it was a priority, with so much else to worry about.

“Seventeen parts per million,” Sisko said, faintly sceptically, “That's well within safety margins.”

Julian grimaced. “Yes, but it’s on the rise, and I’d like to-”

It was about then that Dax appeared in the doorway, like she had a hundred times before. She might look a bit more cheerful than usual, but that was no indication of the absolute catastrophe she was about to bring down on Julian’s head.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, sir,” she said, not entirely suppressing her smile, “But there are a couple of visitors here looking for Julian, and I thought he might want to see them right away.”

Julian’s heart had done a funny little leap at that. He’d hoped, absurdly, for his father and Alin, for all that they’d never visited him at Deep Space Nine before and that their presence would only make Zimmerman more difficult to deal with.

Sisko blinked, nodded. “Well, send them in.”

Julian’s first thought was that he remembered them younger. Well, of course he did. Fourteen years. Richard Bashir’s hair had still been black the last time they’d spoken.

His second thought was much simpler.

No. Oh, please, no.


	2. Chapter 2

Julian had never been afraid of his parents. He’d known, all his life, that he was a great disappointment to them, but he’d never been afraid. That much hadn’t changed with the augmentation, except that the nature of the disappointment had changed. He had turned from an unsatisfactory child to a product that hadn’t given value for money, and he’d never been allowed to forget the fact. Even with his artificial brilliance, he’d bumbled his way through school, talking too much, too loudly, too fast, making the wrong kinds of friends, developing the wrong kinds of interests. Richard Bashir had wanted a clever, successful son, yes…but clever and successful in a way that won more accolades, gained more public attention than medicine offered. He’d wanted a sort of backseat immortality as Julian’s father, and Julian hadn’t complied. Starfleet had been a little more to Richard’s liking, if pro tennis was no longer an option…but that had dried up when Julian had said he was applying for the medical track, and the row they had had about it had been the worst in eighteen years.

“Well,” he said pleasantly, as soon as they were out of Sisko’s ready room – it was important that it sound friendly, or at least civil, and that it could be easily overheard, just so long as they couldn’t make him into the unreasonable one here – “You’ve come at the worst time, I’m afraid. I have an appointment with Doctor Zimmerman that I can’t easily miss.”

“I don’t see why he can’t give you some time off, if your captain could,” Richard Bashir said, in the falsely jocular tone he tended to use whenever they were in public after a spat. There were appearances to keep up, after all.

Julian forced a very painful smile. “Well, you’re only here because of Doctor Zimmerman’s work, so I can’t very well opt out, or you might as well have stayed home.” A little too harsh on the last words, he needed to keep himself under better control. He swallowed down what he’d meant to say, and went on. “Major Kira should be willing to help find you guest quarters – I’ll owe her a fairly massive favour for this, it’s the second time I’ve had to impose on her this week.”

“We’ve barely arrived, and already you’re sending us away?” Amsha said reproachfully, turning great dark eyes on Julian.

“Duty calls,” Julian said with false brightness, wondering how in the world he was supposed to extricate himself from this conversation.

“No, your mother’s right,” Richard said loudly, “We’ve hardly seen you in – how long now? Feels like years!”

“It has been quite a while,” Julian forced out, even while the back of his mind whispered that fourteen years was not a span that other people, _normal_ people went without ever seeing their families.

“Why don’t we all have dinner tonight, then?” Richard suggested. Demanded, Julian couldn’t help but think. “In your quarters, say, so we can all catch up in private? We’d offer to have you in ours, but since they haven’t been assigned yet…”

Julian could see Dax eavesdropping out of the corner of his eye. He could see, too, that they hadn’t gone without attracting some attention. Not close attention – his personal life wasn’t that interesting – but they were in public now, and a public refusal might seem odd, or cold, or invite concerned inquiries about whether everything was all right, and Julian didn’t think he could bear that.

“…fine,” he forced himself to say. “Fine. Yes. I’ll…”

“Would seven o’clock be all right?” Amsha pressed. “Or – what do they call it here? I never did get my head around station time…”

“On Bajor, the nearest would be twenty-hundred hours,” Julian said woodenly. “I…should be off-shift by then.”

“Wonderful!” Richard nearly boomed, clapping Julian on the shoulder in a way that did not precisely hurt, but was hard enough to feel like a warning. “We’ll see you then.”

Julian didn’t realise until he was halfway to the infirmary how short his breaths were coming, how fast. He was moving almost on autopilot, like a wounded animal seeking its den. If he could just get to the infirmary, maybe then he wouldn’t have to think about the fact that he’d have to face his parents tonight in his own quarters, a space that was already starting to feel like home, like safety, like the future he had begun to let himself contemplate. Garak! He was going to have to tell Garak, and he didn’t- He couldn’t- How much of the ugly history between Julian and his parents was he really ready to reveal? Now he couldn’t hide behind ‘it might not even exist’ and ‘it might never matter’ any longer, and his husband still didn’t _know_.

On balance, ordering Miles out and having things out with Zimmerman wasn’t the best decision either – too showy, too obvious, and Zimmerman wasn’t someone Julian thought he could trust not to talk, not with how he’d taken Julian’s first, innocuous request to keep his parents out of this. As he calmed down, he could see all the places where he’d been too angry, too obvious, _handing Zimmerman more weapons_ , probably was what Garak would call it. Giving him more places to pry. He’d want to ask why Julian had been so angry in the interviews, and while Julian was confident in Richard’s ability to lie to make himself look better, he didn’t much fancy how he’d come out of that particular discussion. Looking back, Julian could see he’d made mistakes, but at the time- At the time, he’d just wanted to shout at someone, and without Zimmerman, Julian would have happily gone the rest of his life half-believing that Richard and Amsha Bashir had been the creations of an Obsidian Order psychologist with a turn for the sadistic. And, in doing so, he would have denied his father- denied _Legate Ghemor_ any hope of a reunion with his real son, the one he really loved, whom Julian had supplanted once again. _Little cuckoo_ , the back of his mind whispered in Amsha Bashir’s voice. It had been her pet-name for Jules. It was hard not to regard it as prophetic, now, with more than twenty years’ hindsight to bear it out. That was two nests he’d blundered into, lavished with attention and affection that hadn’t been his to receive. Could he do nothing else? And Jules’ life, whatever it might have been, had already been beyond recovery when Julian first opened his eyes. Cesnil Ghemor might still be out there. He deserved the homecoming Julian had been offered. It would be hard for him to adjust, Julian knew, after so long in Starfleet, and without the Order’s drugs and resources, but he could not wish for a more supportive family, reduced though it might be. But all that depended on Tekeny finding him, and he wouldn’t, so long as he believed there was still a chance that Julian and Cesnil were one and the same.

He was still technically on-call, Sisko believed him to be with his parents, his parents were hopefully getting settled in new quarters very far away from Julian and Garak’s, and Garak had every reason to think Julian was at work. And so, there was nothing to stop Julian from going back to their quarters and sitting down in front of the console.

It would have to be a video-message, he decided. A subspace call would be quicker, but it would be the middle of the night on Mathenis now, and Tekeny had fallen into a diurnal schedule just to be able to participate in society. Julian had wronged the Ghemors enough without his confession disturbing their sleep as well. He pressed ‘record’, set things up, and swallowed.

“Father-” he started, just out of habit, and had to get up and delete that copy. Tekeny Ghemor had never been anything but kind to Julian…but he had his pride. These days, it was almost all he had left. Living in a little two-bedroom flat on Mathenis, earning a meagre living doing the accounts for three different small shops in the small Cardassian district of the city where he’d chosen to settle, had been nothing but humiliation and drudgery for a man used to being at the very top of Cardassian society. Julian had never heard him complain outright, but it was hard to miss how much the comedown had worn on him. For the same reason, ‘Tekeny’ was out. Julian had only ever been allowed to call him that as a precursor to ‘Father’, and- Well. It was hard to ignore that, if not for Julian, Tekeny would still be on Cardassia, still untouchable, and maybe with him in command instead of Meya Rejal, Dukat would never have had the opening he needed to sell Cardassia to the Dominion in the first place. “Legate Ghemor,” he settled on at last, hating the rawness of his own voice.

He laid the events of the last few days out briefly and plainly, not intending to linger. There didn’t seem to be much point.

“I’m sorry,” he finished. “I never-” _I never meant to lie to you_ , he meant to say, but the words got stuck in his throat. He swallowed again, drew in a sharp breath, and started again. “You’ll want _The Guiding Winds_ back,” he said, “I’ll- I’ll send it, as soon as I can. And-” he cut himself off. Offering the value of everything he’d ever received from Tekeny back in money would only insult him, even when there had been some things he could ill-afford to send. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, uselessly. “I- I can try to find the real Cesnil with what information I have, but I don’t know how much success I’m likely to see. Garak might be able to help, if I ask, but-” He cut himself off. He was rambling again. “Your son must have loved you,” he managed in the end. “He’ll remember that. Or he’ll re-learn it. You were one of the best men I’ve known.” He twisted his hands, wishing he had something he could do with them. “I…I don’t expect we’ll see each other again,” he settled on. “So…this is goodbye.”

He finished it there, because he didn’t trust his voice to go on, and sent it before he lost his nerve. Then he went into the other room, plucked Kukalaka off his shelf, curled around him in the middle of the bed, and tried his utmost not to panic at the thought of what that evening would hold.

He’d been lying there for less than an hour when he heard the door in the other room open, and soft, muffled footsteps. Garak. Who else but Garak? Anyone else would have needed to chime and ask for entry, and Julian had never known anyone else who came so close to being silent in all their movements.

“Doctor?” Garak’s voice said in the next room, quietly enough that ordinary human hearing might not have picked it up. And then, a little louder. “Julian? Oh-?”

Julian hadn’t thought to close the door, didn’t roll over to look, but he felt the bed dip beside him, and Garak’s cool, broad hand rest on his shoulder.

“Julian?” Garak’s voice was almost gentle. “What _ever_ is the matter?”

Julian shook his head. He didn’t want to speak just then. He didn’t honestly want to _think_ , except that doing anything else was impossible. Garak was still for a moment, but then Julian felt the bed dip farther, and then Garak’s weight at his back, Garak’s arm sliding around his middle, Garak’s scaly ornate nose at his neck. He still smelt faintly of k'selses flowers and lennet and spices Julian couldn’t remember the names of, from the Cardassian bride-soap that had been Alin’s wedding-present to them. It ought to have been comforting, it had always been before, but now all it did was make Julian feel even more of a thief than he had before.

“Is it Zimmerman?” Garak said quietly, almost in Julian’s ear. “Does he know?”

Julian shook his head.

“Then who-”

“My parents,” Julian admitted, muffled by Kukalaka’s fur.” The human set.” He laughed, and it came out with an awful edge of hysteria. “The only set, as it turns out.”

Garak had gone very still against him, but then his arm tightened a little. “I see. Doctor Zimmerman was able to contact them, I take it?”

That tone of voice would, on anyone else, have been mild. On Garak, it was just a few shades removed from ‘murderous’.

Julian snorted. “Worse. They’re _here_.”

Garak had gone still again, considering, but then he was pressing close, his other arm worming under Julian to wrap around him, pull him tighter against Garak’s chest.

“Well,” Garak said, with false brightness. “That’s very easily dealt with. Just say the word and, I promise you, no-one will ever find Zimmerman’s body.”

Julian snuffled out a rather damp laugh. “No! No murder! Honestly, I can’t take you anywhere…”

“If you insist,” Garak huffed, and then, more quietly. “I’m sorry you had to face them without proper warning.”

Julian froze. “…why would I need to be warned?” he asked, suddenly, horribly aware of how fast his heart was going.

Garak sighed. “Julian. Listen. Imagine, for a moment, a son who, upon being informed that his _beloved_ parents are not and never have been real, and that a stranger is his true father, has no defence against this because he has not spoken to his parents in many years. Imagine, then, that this young man is able to return home, but does not attempt to contact his family in order to verify his identity, despite the fact that doing so would greatly ease his attempts to regain the trust of his friends and colleagues after a difficult experience. Imagine, also,” Garak went on, “That he adopts this stranger entirely as a father, shows full filial piety to this man that he did not to his own flesh and blood, and that, furthermore, in all those years he makes no effort to discover whether the people he remembers ever existed at all.” Garak shifted against him, nosing at the back of Julian’s neck. “To render such a tale even vaguely believable, either son or parents must be a monster of cruelty, and I credit myself with too good a knowledge of your character to believe the fault was on that side.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Julian said stiffly. “I mean…they looked after me for eighteen years, kept a roof over my head. They didn’t have to – I’d have been looked after if they’d given me up. And they never hurt me. Not…they didn’t hit me or anything like that. It’s not…it wasn’t the same as things were between you and Tain.”

It was the first time they’d spoken of what Julian had seen in the prison camp since they’d escaped, and Garak’s arm tightened around him.

“I sincerely hope, doctor, that should we ever have children of our own, they will have better to say of us than ‘they never hit me.’”

It was the first time, too, that Garak had ever spoken of a future beyond the coming war, and Julian twisted in his arms to look at him.

“Is that…something you would want?” he probed, “Children?”

Garak avoided his eyes. “I’m Cardassian, aren’t I?”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“For me it is.”

Julian slumped a little. “I don’t know if I’ll ever feel ready for that.”

“If it helps,” Garak offered, “The chances of my…situation…ever changing enough for it to become a possibility are vanishingly low.”

“And we might both get blown to bits by Jem’Hadar before we have to worry about it,” Julian added, smiling mirthlessly. “There, I think I’ve found the bright side to all this.”

Garak frowned at him, and even Julian could tell he’d misjudged that.

“They’re coming here,” he blurted out, before he could stop himself. “For dinner. I…” he sighed. “They asked in public. I couldn’t refuse without…”

“I see.” Garak’s hand carded gently through Julian’s hair, making Julian want to purr beneath the attention. “I know that trick. I’ve used it before. On you, even.”

“I never wanted to say no to you.”

“That doesn’t mean I should have denied you the ability to do it.” Garak pulled away and sat up, and Julian felt a twinge of annoyance. How typical of Garak to find a way to turn even this into an exercise in his own self-loathing.

“It’s not the same with you,” Julian said, sitting up in his turn and setting Kukalaka down on his pillow. “No-one would have thought anything of it if I’d refused lunch with you, or if they had they’d only have said it showed I was developing some sense. They’re my parents. It’s…expected.”

Garak only looked at him. “And Legate Ghemor?”

“I’ve sent him a message.” Julian didn’t want to talk about Tekeny. That wasn’t something for now. Later, when he’d received any reply that might come, or resigned itself to the fact it wasn’t coming at all. At night, when he could break down in Garak’s arms without having to worry about being called in for a medical emergency red-eyed and sniffling. For now, he had other worries. He could survive one dinner without losing his head, he thought.

How very wrong he was.

The rest of the afternoon went by quietly. By which it was meant that Julian spent the whole time in the infirmary, despite not technically being on shift. He _was_ the most senior doctor on the station, after all, he was allowed to take a few extra shifts every now and then, and if it meant he didn’t have to talk to anyone about his parents’ sudden arrival, all the better. But there was no avoiding dinner, and even if there had been…best to get the recriminations and guilt out of the way in private, or else Richard would probably take the opportunity to bemoan to everyone in Quark’s bar how ungrateful a son he had been saddled with. It was hardly as if he hadn’t done it before, when Julian had been in his teens and angry and mixed-up and so easily painted as spoilt and selfish and ungrateful to all Richard’s colleagues and acquaintances wherever they happened to be living. It had been bad enough then. It would be unbearable now.

“Er- Doctor Bashir?” Rij said, sticking her head around the door of his office, just as Julian was finishing a report on the effects of argonite poisoning on Lieutenant Vilix’pran’s latest litter – still in the hatchling pod, and far too young to be exposed to anything above twenty parts per million – “You said to remind you at nineteen forty hours?”

“Yes, thank you,” he said, grimacing and pressing ‘send’. “Call me if anything happens here – I know some of the residents are very bright, but…”

“They’ll be fine,” Rij said bracingly, “We wouldn’t interrupt your family dinner over that! It’s been – what, five years since you were on Earth?”

Julian nodded, heart sinking a little. “Four and a half, yes, not counting professional visits.”

“You must have a lot to catch up on, then – the rest of us can handle anything short of a full-scale plague for one night.”

It was probably uncharitable to hope that a plague _would_ break out, in light of that comment, but Julian’s goodwill towards anyone was nearly at breaking point by this stage of the proceedings, and he couldn’t foresee that improving until Zimmerman, Richard, Amsha, the LMH and everything to do with it were off the station and far away.

It wasn’t until he was back in their quarters and setting the table ready for dinner, Garak cursing at the replicator in quiet Kardasi a few feet away, that he remembered that he’d never actually told his parents about Garak.

“What’s he doing here?” were the first words out of Richard Bashir’s mouth when he arrived that evening, glaring balefully at Garak.

Julian could feel Garak’s eyes on him, now. “He lives here,” he said shortly. “That _is_ usual for married couples, isn’t it?”

Amsha made an odd, strangled high-pitched noise in her throat. “Married! You never said-”

“Well, why should he?” Richard said brusquely, “He never tells _us_ anything – you know we had to find out from Doctor Zimmerman where Jules was stationed?” he added to Garak, over Julian’s shoulder. “Didn’t even leave us a message to say he’d be right out in the wilderness in the middle of lord knows what sort of strangeness!”

Garak’s eye-ridges went up. “…I see,” he said mildly. Julian nearly winced. “And, ah, you never troubled to find out for yourselves?”

“Starfleet duty assignments are classified,” Julian put in, just to say something, since he was quite certain everyone else in the room knew as much already. “It’s rather assumed that officers will notify anyone they want to know where they are.”

Garak smiled at him, “Quite sensible, I suppose.”

“If the negligent boy remembered to tell anyone, it might’ve been,” Richard grumbled, pulling out a seat and sitting down uninvited. “But then, he’s always been careless.”

“ _Has_ he?” Garak widened his eyes, “I’ve always found Julian to be quite conscientious. Meticulous, one might say.”

Amsha frowned a little. “Still…married. How long have you two…?”

“We’ve known each other five years,” Garak supplied, casting a look at Julian that might have read as besotted to anyone who didn’t know he was teasing, “Of course, I was lost from the moment I laid eyes on him, but Julian…”

“Well, sometimes you have to push him a little,” Richard said heartily, his glare fading a little at the chance to show off his own consequence. “It took quite a while to talk him into taking up medicine, but he did.”

Julian tried, and failed, not to grimace.

“Julian,” Garak said, in the carefully polite, puzzled tone that tended to end in corpses, “Tells me that he wanted to be a doctor since he was…I think it was five. And that your ambition was to see him playing professional tennis?”

Richard spluttered a little. “Yes, well, _Julian_ says-”

“Well,” Julian nearly snapped, “It’s the truth. And there was no reason to say it in front of Commander Sisko, either!”

“And would you’ve been able to go to medical school anyway without us?” Richard retorted, glaring, “No-one in their right mind’s going to believe medicine was your first choice of career – boys that age go for glamour, fame, glory, not handing out hyposprays to a bunch of-”

“Richard,” Amsha said, a little timidly, “Let’s not fight. We haven’t even started dinner yet – it smells good,” she added, with desperate brightness, “Is that…”

“Replicator’s finest,” Garak admitted with a rueful smile, “I’m afraid the station is rather short on facilities for proper cooking. Julian, could you…”

“Of course,” Julian said quickly, glad of the excuse to get away from the table. “Sorry,” he whispered to Garak over by the replicator, “I should’ve warned you before they arrived-”

“No, no,” Garak replied, in an undertone that nonetheless managed to be much more easily missed than a whisper, “The chance to form one’s own impressions is crucial.

“And what impressions have you formed?”

Garak’s expression just then said everything it needed to, and then some, and Julian couldn’t help but smile at it, even with everything else. He couldn’t help but think of that _other_ family dinner, not even two weeks ago now, the evening after their wedding. It had been tense in parts – with Garak, that was nearly unavoidable – but there had been laughter, and after the first glasses of kanar and wine had gone around they’d been able to talk freely, about books and politics and how their lives were going. Well, he thought, that was over and done with, and this was what he had. It was enough to make him wish he could just break down and sob for a bit, but the thought of showing weakness in front of Richard made his skin crawl. Later. There would be time for all that later.

Getting the food set out and everyone serving themselves was enough to provide a lull in the conversation, even with a few comments from Richard about foreign food that made Julian want to hit him.

“So,” Garak said, once they were all seated and served, “I understand it’s been…fourteen years, wasn’t it…since you last spoke?”

Julian stared, horrified. No. Please, no. The last thing they needed tonight was more probing into things best left forgotten.

“…you told him that, as well, did you?” Richard said, giving Julian a very nasty look. “Yes, it’s been a long time – more Jules’ decision than ours, really. You’d think he didn’t want to admit he _had_ parents! But then, he’s been doing it since he was in school, almost! Acting like he’s too good for the people that raised him!”

“Wher _ever_ could he have developed such an idea?” Garak’s voice was heavy with irony. Julian winced. Even Richard Bashir couldn’t have missed that.

“Just what are you getting at?” he demanded, glaring at Garak.

Garak gave a shrug that seemed calculated to offend, “Only that if _you_ will tell a child that he’s behaving above his family, and make snide allusions to the fact in front of other company, he is hardly to be blamed for taking the idea into his head that he _is_. Certainly,” he added, “I’ve seen no sign of any such tendency. The good doctor is…perhaps a little overconfident in his abilities at times-” A sly smile aimed at Julian. “-but I’ve never heard him behave as if he were _better_ than his company. Even,” he added, a little sharply, “When he manifestly was.”

“Gar _ak_ ,” Julian hissed, feeling heat rush to his face, but Garak didn’t seem to notice.

Richard’s face was starting to purple a little at the edges, now, Julian saw. Amsha did too, because she cut in quickly.

“Captain Sisko seems like a very nice man, Jules.”

Richard snorted. “Not like the captain of the transport that brought us here,” he said sourly, “I've never met a ruder, more abrasive man in my life. I tell you, when I used to run shuttles, I never would have tolerated that kind of behaviour toward my passengers.”

Julian didn’t trouble to hide his expression at that. “Look-” He’d meant to say ‘Dad’, but somehow the word just wouldn’t come. “-you’re talking to me now. You were a third-class steward for all of six months.”

Richard took a sip of water, his expression gone harder, the sort of look that generally meant a row was on the horizon. “That’s right,” he retorted, “And I was required to have daily contact with the passengers. And you can bet that if I even _looked_ at them the wrong way, I would've been discharged on the spot!”

“I thought you were,” Julian said acidly. And, from what he remembered, he’d done a lot more than _look_ , too. Garak had gone quiet now, watchful – what was he expecting to find?

“No, I resigned.”

Julian raised his eyebrows. “If you say so.”

Fifteen years ago, the look on Richard’s face would’ve been enough to shut him up before another explosion. Now, with Garak right there beside him and no way for Richard to use Julian’s augmentations as a stick to beat him with without letting slip the secret, Julian could almost call himself safe.

“Are you still doing research, Jules?” Amsha pressed, with a nervous glance at her husband.

“Yes,” Julian said, “When I have time – things have been rather chaotic recently.” The projects he’d had going, his studies of prion replication in ganglionic cell clusters, had stood entirely neglected while the changeling had lived his life, and between moving and Doctor Zimmerman he hadn’t had time to take them back up again yet. He would, he expected – just as soon as this mess was dealt with, and when that would be he didn’t know.

Richard made a contemptuous noise in his throat. “You could’ve done research back on Earth. I told you that five years ago. But you insisted on taking this assignment because you wanted to work in, um… _frontier medicine_.”

“We weren’t on speaking terms five years ago,” Julian said flatly.

“You never read any of our messages!” Richard snapped back. “If you had, I could’ve told you-”

“I, for one, am very pleased he _did_ come to Deep Space Nine,” Garak interrupted. He was wearing the ‘besotted’ look again, the one he seemed to have settled on as the best way of defanging Julian’s parents. “And he’s certainly had far more scope for his research out here than he might have done on Earth, with the wormhole so close by.”

Richard glared at him. Garak smiled back innocently, the model son-in-law. It was calculated to frustrate, and under any other circumstances Julian would have been trying not to snicker, but the knot of tension in his stomach grew tighter with every moment. It was as if Garak was _trying_ to goad Richard into an outburst. Perhaps he was. The questions, the silences…Garak hated not knowing things, and this…he’d made no secret of it that he wanted to know what it was that made Julian react the way he did…it shouldn’t have felt like a betrayal, not when he’d known Garak was untrustworthy from the start. But it did.

“So,” he said nastily, looking for something to lash out at, because if he didn’t, he’d go mad. “You’re doing ‘landscape architecture’ now?”

“It’s all he can talk about,” Amsha said warmly, seizing on this new topic, “You should see the stacks of drawings in our house – it’s like living in a drafting studio!”

“I imagine it must be quite different from how things are done on Cardassia,” Garak said, sounding for the first time as if there were something real there, something wistful.

Richard puffed up a little at that, “Some, uh, very important people have expressed interest in my park designs. I have some very good prospects on the horizon.”

“Oh, you always have very good prospects,” Julian said, and even he could hear the edge in his voice now, the bitterness he’d thought he’d hidden so well. “And they were always just _over_ that horizon.”

He’d watched the pattern for eighteen years. Even now, he was intimately familiar with it. Every new job started with a burst of enthusiasm – surely, no-one could have worked harder than Richard Bashir in the first few weeks of a new passion – but then the enthusiasm dwindled, as it always did, and the complaints would begin. Too much work, too little reward being offered too slowly, too little appreciation for the work he did. Lazy co-workers, smarmy bosses, unsupportive family. The job would end, one way or another, a new one would be found, a new enthusiasm would flare up, and the whole sorry cycle would start all over again.

“Um…” Amsha started. “Maybe you should tell us about the interviews we’re doing tomorrow, Jules? What kind of questions will they ask?”

“I can’t speak for everyone,” Garak said, before Julian could. “But I sincerely doubt Doctor Zimmerman will ask for _your_ first impressions of Julian.”

“Doctor Zimmerman, as I understand it, is trying to build a complete psychological profile of me,” Julian cut in, “He’ll probably ask all kinds of questions. Try to keep your answers as brief and to the point as you can…” his eyes flicked to Garak. How much trust was really there? “I’d rather you didn’t give him too many openings to probe into any awkward areas,” he settled on at last. “He doesn’t like me very much.”

“It’s certainly enough to make anyone doubt his ability as a judge of character,” Garak said, sounding faintly amused…but there was something else there, too. Still fishing for information. With all Garak’s secrets, couldn’t he let this one of Julian’s pass by? Still, Julian could see the look on Richard’s face now. If Garak was looking for an outburst, he wasn’t going to get one.

“Why wouldn’t he like you, Jules?” Amsha said, and had the nerve to look offended.

“…I’m hardly going to be able to explain that, am I?” Julian said, rather sourly. “He just doesn’t. And he doesn’t especially want me to be the model for the LMH – I think he was rather hoping he’d get to provide the model again – so please don’t give him anything he could use as an excuse to have me deemed unfit for it. Since we’ve gone through this much fuss and bother, it might as well be worth it.”

Richard snorted. “Fuss and bother, he says! One of the most prestigious jobs they could’ve given him, it sounded like, a real honour, and he just treats it as an interruption in the humdrum workings of one little-”

“An _honour_ that I never wanted!” Julian snapped, a little too vehemently. “I’d much rather have kept on quietly here, even if it _isn’t_ always particularly glamorous, if it meant all this trouble!”

“That’s exactly the sort of attitude I was talking about!” Richard retorted, “Look at you! Opportunities most people would kill for, and here you are complaining that they decided to give you the job without letting you check your diary to see if the chance of being remembered as long as this programme lasts fit in with your schedule!”

“Then one of those people who would have killed for it can have the job, and they’re welcome to it!”

Richard rolled his eyes. “You think like that, you know where that’d lead you? Nowhere! We didn’t slave for years for you to end up as an overworked medical drudge on a backwater space station!”

“‘Slaved’?” Julian snapped, “A few lucky turns at blackjack is ‘slaving’?”

“Don’t you try and turn this back on me! What d’you think’s going to happen if you keep throwing away all your opportunities? If you want to spend your whole life as a nobody, we might as well’ve-” he cut himself off, but the damage was done.

Julian could feel how still he was now. Not still in the sense of simple absence of movement, but the stillness that came from every muscle straining to keep from outright violence.

“I think,” Garak said into the quiet, “That, all things considered, we’d do better to skip dessert.”

Amsha frowned, “Oh- No, I was hoping-”

“Oh, let them get rid of us,” Richard snapped, “He can barely stand to be in the same room with us!”

It was difficult to resist a Garak who was set on something, and so Julian left most of the job of herding his parents out of the room to him. He didn’t think he could trust himself to speak just now. His hands were steady, but it _felt_ as if they should be shaking. He stared without seeing at the far wall, and waited for the anger to recede. It always had before. This time, though, it sat in the core of him like a stone at the bottom of a deep well, and there was no drawing it out.

“They’re gone,” Garak’s voice said quietly from behind him.

“Good,” Julian said, almost mechanically. He stood, and started recycling the dishes, keeping his back to Garak. He didn’t want to look at Garak right now, either.

“Julian…”

Julian dumped the last of the dishes, and sucked in a harsh breath. “Profitable evening?” he said, his voice level, calm, and unyielding. “I expect you’ve got us all figured out now, after all that.”

“…no. No, I don’t think so. But I think I might make a guess, if you’ll permit me?”

“I hardly see that I can stop you,” Julian said, and heard Garak’s low, pained hiss in reply.

“Doctor…”

“No, no, by all means, psychoanalyse away! I’m sure it will be _fascinating_.”

“Very well. May I start by saying that I despise your father?”

“He isn’t my-” he cut himself off. “Certainly. I despised yours.”

That, he knew, was low. Whatever Julian’s own opinion on Tain had been, Garak had loved him more even than he had hated him, and he was still grieving. When the rage cleared, he knew, he would probably feel no end of guilt for saying it, but now- It was strange. His head was clear, he could think and reason, but yet he could feel every inch of him almost vibrating with an anger that was scalpel-fine and seemed to override all else.

“He regards you as a disappointment,” Garak said baldly, “But it’s more than that. He feels…entitled…to your life. Or rather, to your successes. You are…not quite a child to him, are you, doctor? No. That’s simply…useful. A means of ignoring the real problem.”

Julian twitched. “Stop it.”

“The truest description of that disappointment,” Garak went on silkily, “Is that you are not _him_. A means for Richard Bashir to live forever. To live his life over again, since his own has proven…unsatisfactory.”

“I said _stop!_ ” Julian’s voice had risen to a yell by the last word. “Two years. Two years, and I hardly know anything about who you were before you grabbed me by the shoulders in the Replimat the week I arrived on DS9. Every secret, every lie, every time you haven’t told me things that mattered, I’ve never complained.”

“You _know_ the truth,” Garak said, and Julian hated that he could still sound so calm when Julian could feel the tears pricking at his eyes, and knew that anger was the only thing keeping him upright. “I appreciate your high opinion of my talents, of course, but you can hardly imagine Tain and I arranged his last words ahead of time for the sake of playing to an audience he never knew was there.”

“Then we complement each other very well!” Julian snapped. “You know everything else about me. I know nothing else about you. Can’t you let that be the end of it?”

“I wish I could, doctor.”

“Then why don’t you?”

Garak made an irritated noise. “Because, Julian, it is clear that it will not be the end of this! That- _man_ will be on the station probably until Doctor Zimmerman’s work has ended, and just his presence here is enough to distress you this badly. I would hardly be fulfilling my obligations if I didn’t at least attempt to learn how to neutralise the threat he poses.”

“Th- There _is_ no threat! We just don’t get on! Plenty of people have bad relationships with their parents!”

“Nonetheless, there is something you’re afraid of.” Garak’s eyes narrowed. “Not the abuse itself, whatever form it took. He would hardly admit _that_ to Doctor Zimmerman. Something else.”

“I suppose this _brilliant_ theory of yours accounts for the possibility I might just want to avoid embarrassment?” Julian said acidly, to conceal the way his heart was hammering. Garak was pushing too far, too fast, he’d thought they’d had more time, he couldn’t lose him so quickly-

“No.” Garak said simply. “They disregard your preferences in far too many ways for you to seriously believe they would protect your dignity. You would never have raised the subject, if it were of any less than the utmost importance.”

He wasn’t wrong there, whatever other assumptions he might have made.

“Julian,” Garak said, voice low and intimate. “You are entitled to every effort I might make to help you in this, but I cannot offer that help if I don’t know what it is I’m to defend against.”

Julian closed his eyes, and felt the anger wash out of him, leaving exhaustion and grief and fear and plain frustration in its place. “I…Elim. It’s not…” he drew in a breath. “There’s nothing you can do. Nothing either of us can do, really. But I can’t- Can’t talk about it. And I don’t think they will either. They’ve kept it secret this long.”

“Are there any records? Anything beyond their testimony that might give you away?”

“No.” Julian swallowed. “Yes. The Obsidian Order must have found out somehow- It was what they used, the first time-”

“I can hide it,” Garak said, without hesitating for a moment. “But only if I know where to look.”

Julian drew in a breath. He almost refused, but then-

_I should have killed your mother before you were born._

It had felt like a violation, hearing that, even knowing Garak had wanted him there. And now he knew, he couldn’t stop combing back over everything Garak had ever said, every hint of Garak’s past he had ever heard. One sentence, and he had known Garak, to the core, and after that…how much of the surface, really, still mattered? Tain had known. Tain had made no secret of it, in the prison camp, in private, when he could use it to force Julian into compliance. It felt- felt wrong, that Tain had known that, and Garak had not, now Julian knew it had been real.

“Adigeon Prime,” he said quietly. “I…if there is anything to find, you’ll find it there.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Writing Tekeny and Kira when they don't know or love each other is *really hard*, you guys, so I've tried to minimise it here. Again, this is the one issue I have with this 'verse. I should probably find a storyline of Julian's to give to Kira to make up for it.  
> Also, there is a poll on my tumblr on whether Tekeny lives or dies in this AU, for reasons that are laid out in that post. If you have a strong opinion on this, please make your feelings known here.  
> http://thornfield13713.tumblr.com/post/167608281633/ok-real-talk-time-tekenys-death-is-an-important#notes

The message was text, sent over subspace, and Julian’s heart twisted in his chest at the sight of the sender’s name. If he could have put off opening it, he would, but…well. Garak would know soon enough. He might as well get it over with, if he was going to lose them both. He opened the message with grim determination, and read.

_Julian,_

_I received your message last night, and caught the first shuttle for Deep Space Nine this morning. We must talk. I should arrive within three days of you receiving this message. Please don’t concern yourself with arranging accommodation – I have already sent ahead._

_Tekeny Ghemor_

 

Julian stared at the message, chin in his hand, and wondered desperately if it was too late to change his name and disappear off into the Gamma Quadrant. Probably, with the Dominion out there, but at least with the Dominion he knew what to think. But then…it wasn’t that he expected there to be the sort of ugly scene there had been at dinner last night. But he’d expected the process of getting disowned – could he call it being disowned, if it turned out he had never technically been ‘owned’ in the first place? – to be…quieter, somehow. One message, possibly a brief reply agreeing that maybe it was best that they not contact each other from now on, and any link between them would be gone, just like that. Why drag this out any longer than they had to, when all it could do was cause more pain?

It was a slow morning in the Infirmary again – inasmuch as vaccinating fifteen active young Hydratera, none over the age of ten, could be termed ‘slow’ – and when Julian took his lunch break he found Garak up to his eyebrows in satin and sulky bridesmaids, meaning that there was no avoiding Dax when she pounced on him outside the Replimat, looking positively gleeful.

“…they’ve been talking, then?” Julian said, trying not to sound gloomy, and failing.

Jadzia’s smirk softened a bit as she nudged him, “Nothing that bad,” she said teasingly, “All parents embarrass their children – it’s practically a duty, once they get old enough to understand it.”

“Is it?” Julian said bleakly. Would Garak have found out by now? He’d come to bed late, but then, he’d come to bed at all, and he wouldn’t have, if he’d known. How long did they have left?

“Oh, absolutely – well, Tobin tried not to, but he always let his kids walk all over him. And I don’t think Audrid really did it on purpose, but…”

“I thought only three of your hosts had had children. That’s two already,” Julian said, a little more sharply than he’d meant. He’d never been embarrassed by Tekeny. Legate Ghemor. Maybe it was age – he’d seen enough of his classmates as a teenager complaining about being embarrassed by parents who had seemed to him quite unobjectionable – or maybe it was just another sign of what Julian had wanted, but could never have kept.

Jadzia frowned, “You’re not that annoyed about a few embarrassing stories, are you? Because I’m sure I could tell you a few from when I was that age – though, did you really go through a phase of telling awful jokes to everyone you met?”

She’d chosen one of the safer ones, then. He didn’t think he could bear another recitation of ‘it’s only because of me he went into medicine at all’, even if it had been true.

“Probably,” he admitted. “I didn’t really get the hang of wordplay until later.” Until he’d started secondary school, in fact, which had frustrated and exasperated Richard into drilling a few humorous anecdotes into him to be recited by rote whenever the situation seemed to require one. He’d been a fairly humourless child, by natural inclination, although he’d learnt early on that making people laugh was one way to make them like you, and applied himself to the task doggedly, assiduously, intensely…and almost entirely without success.

“Much, much later,” Dax agreed, laughing. “It’s cute. Much better than mine – I went through a phase where I wanted to be a spaceship until I was about six.”

“Did you?” Julian said, his attention starting to drift. His parents’ interviews with Zimmerman weren’t meant to be until tomorrow, but he couldn’t help but worry. Richard Bashir could bluster all he liked about knowing how to keep a secret, but…less than five years, the sentence was for having a minor genetically engineered. For Julian…maybe not automatic commitment to the nearest available institution, if he couldn’t be proved a danger, but the definition of ‘danger’ for an augment was so variable. Just entering Starfleet might be enough for that, if he were found out, and even if it wasn’t…he’d never work again. Practicing was out of the question, but no-one would give even an ordinary menial sort of job to an augment when there were ordinary people applying. He might not starve, but it’d be a very bare, constrained sort of life he could lead, with that on his records. They’d never given it away before…but they’d never been interrogated this closely before, either, and even if they didn’t…Garak wasn’t the sort to give away secrets at no benefit to himself, but yet- But yet…more than fifteen years of knowing his life would be over the moment anyone else found out. And now someone had. It was difficult not to feel it almost like a premonition, that this would be the end of him, even knowing Garak as he did.

“-a bit overbearing, maybe, but they seem nice enough,” Jadzia was saying now. “How’d they take to Garak?”

Julian shook himself. “-what? Oh. Um. Not brilliantly.”

“Well, if they really didn’t know he existed until last night, that’s not surprising,” Jadzia said practically.

“I didn’t know _they_ existed until they turned up!” Julian retorted.

From the look on Jadzia’s face, he’d said too much.

“Have you told Legate Ghemor yet?”

Julian nodded, a little stiffly. “He’s coming here,” he admitted. “Probably about Cesnil, now he knows, so I’m going to try and find out what I can about Cesnil Ghemor, now I know for sure he isn’t me after all, so I have something to tell him when he gets here.”

That could, after all, be the only favour the Legate could possibly ask of him, that required a whole three days’ journey to ask. Probably he’d thought it was too delicate a matter to entrust to subspace, when asking a favour of the man who’d done his utmost to replace Cesnil in the Legate’s life. As if he had to beg Julian for help! Maybe it was a natural conclusion, but he couldn’t be comfortable with it, not at all.

 “He’s visiting?” Jadzia said, blinking and looking…far more pleased than Julian had expected, really, given how worried she’d been after that first abduction. “I didn’t think Cardassians believed in adoptive relationships.”

“They don’t,” Julian replied. “It’s not like that. He’s coming because I’m a Starfleet officer who could find out quickly about another Starfleet officer, and that’s what Cesnil will be trying to pass as, if he’s still alive.”

“He said that to you?”

“Not in so many words, but…” Julian shrugged, and tried not to fiddle too obviously with the chain of his enjoining knife. The meaning had been plain enough.

Jadzia sat back a little, “He didn’t outright say ‘you are no use to me if you are not my son’?”

“Of course not,” Julian nearly snapped. “He’s not…he’s not the sort of person who’d say that outright. But you said it yourself, Cardassians don’t believe in adoptive relationships, and I’m not going to push for a relationship that isn’t wanted. I’ve learnt that much since I started here.”

Jadzia winced. “You weren’t that bad. But – ok, say that’s true. At least you know, right? I mean…” she was clearly groping around for something to say now, and Julian wished she wouldn’t. “…you know your own parents are real now, that’s got to be something…”

“It’s definitely that,” Julian agreed, and if there wasn’t much conviction in his voice, well, he could probably put that down to still being tired from wrangling Lieutenant Vilix’pran’s growing brood all morning. _Fifteen._ It was enough to make any sane person shudder. No-one had ever asked why it was he didn’t talk to his parents, but it had been quietly known around the station ever since the Order had taken him from that burns conference. He could see the curiosity in Dax’s eyes now, but he couldn’t answer it. He grimaced, and changed the subject to Jadzia’s latest attempt to convince Major Kira of the benefits of holosuites, and just how _this_ one had gone wrong, and Jadzia didn’t ask again.

Back to the Infirmary, the usual round of broken bones and minor ailments and writing up prescription codes for medication, and Julian was almost beginning to be able to ignore the quiet terror that this would be it, this time there would be no avoiding it. He’d had a few close calls before, but they’d all been his own slips, and so he could correct them or cover them over as needed. Now…four people on this station knew his secret. Probably more. The Obsidian Order had known his secret, and how far had that information spread? Still he kept going, kept writing reports and administering hyposprays and setting broken bones to be fused back together, because it had to be done. He’d lived with the fear since he was fifteen years old. He could live through it now. All the same…he kept waiting for Garak to find him. Or Odo to arrive with a couple of security officers to take Julian into custody. Or Captain Sisko, furious at the traitor he’d had in his ranks all along. Julian had never precisely _liked_ Eddington, and that had calcified into a fairly solid dislike after he’d sabotaged the engines of the Defiant when it had been going to rescue Garak and Odo two years ago, but…if defecting to the Maquis had elicited such a response, how much worse would it be when Sisko discovered he’d had the next best thing to Khan Noonien Singh in his ranks all this time? Julian might never have wanted to act against the Federation…but who would believe that, once the truth came out? He had to admit, it didn’t look good. An augment infiltrating Starfleet, volunteering for what had turned out to be a vital post on the front lines of the coming war…no amount of protestations that he hadn’t known, no-one had, would be enough to save him there. The calculations came easily – they always had – and the odds they showed now were more dismal than ever before.

He almost didn’t hear the footsteps behind him, between that distraction and the report in front of him, but then:

“So, this is where you’ve been hiding all day,” Richard Bashir’s voice said.

Julian stiffened. “I’m not hiding,” he said shortly, not turning around. “I’m working.”

Richard snorted, “You’ve barely stuck your nose out of here all day,” he said scathingly, “And your mother and I need a word with you.”

Julian’s eyes flicked around his office as he turned, to see his parents both standing there, Amsha looking nervous and Richard downright belligerent. “Not here,” he said in a low, urgent near-whisper, “We can’t- I don’t know who might be listening. We can’t talk about it _here_.”

“We can’t talk about it anywhere, with that Cardassian of yours listening,” Richard snapped, glaring at him. “Which – want to tell us what you were thinking when you did that?”

“When I – what were you expecting me to do?” Julian snapped, “Live celibate for the rest of my life? I’m thirty-two years old, I’d say that’s well past the age where you have _any_ right to pass judgement on my relationships!”

“Jules, please, it’s not about that,” Amsha cut in desperately, “It’s only…I’m sure he’s a very nice man, but can you trust him, Jules?”

“It doesn’t matter whether Jules thinks he can trust him,” Richard said irritably, “If he even begins to suspect, if you slip around him for one moment, what d’you think’s going to happen then? We haven’t kept this secret for more than twenty-five years to see you get us all locked up because you took it into your head you wanted some-”

“He knows,” Julian interrupted. “Or he will, soon enough.”

Amsha made an awful sort of choking noise in her throat, and Richard seemed to swell with fury.

“He- How could you be so _stupid_ , Jules? You might as well go and tell Starfleet Security here and now, if you’re just going to go around giving information like that away to every floozy you-”

“We’re _married_!” Julian nearly snarled, “And until last night, he didn’t even know there was anything to hide, so _thanks_ for that. Really.”

“Jules-” Amsha started, but Richard overrode her before she could get anything else out.

“Well, maybe if you hadn’t started throwing a wobbly over this whole LMH thing, we’d all have been able to keep this quiet a bit longer, but you did! And now we’ve got to clean up after you!”

“Clean up- What exactly do you imagine you can do about it?” Julian demanded. “It’d be your word against his, even if he were going to tell, and anyway-” He broke off. No. He couldn’t tell them that. Even if Garak’s secrets could be used to destroy him, Julian knew already that he could never bring himself to it. “He may leave me, but I don’t think he’ll give me away,” he said at last, and was surprised to find he believed it. Garak was not to be trusted, he knew, but yet trusting him had become almost second nature, even after the events at the Founders’ Planet. In spite of logic, experience, instinct, common sense, Julian trusted him. Was this how Garak had felt, after Tain had been dead, when he knew Julian held his greatest secret, could destroy him with a few words, carefully chosen and said in the right ear? Now, Garak held that same power over Julian, and it was terrifying…but Julian didn’t think Garak would choose to destroy him. Not even if this meant the end of all they were to each other, no matter how disgusted with him Garak might be. It wasn’t Garak giving him away that he feared.

“You don’t _think_?” Richard mimicked. “Well, that’s bloody obvious, the way you’ve been carrying on! You act like you’re so much smarter than the rest of us, but one thing that clearly didn’t get improved any was your common sense!”

Then that would make it the only thing they _hadn’t_ meddled with, Julian thought. “Garak isn’t the danger here,” he said shortly, “You nearly let it slip at dinner last night, and the last thing I – the last thing any of us needs is-”

“Of course we would never do anything to jeopardise your career,” Amsha said desperately, casting a worried look at her husband.

“Then at least try and take this seriously! If Zimmerman finds out-”

“Oh, so now we’re not taking it seriously?” Richard demanded, “We’re not as _smart_ as you are. We don’t have your gifted intellect, so we can’t see the perfectly bleeding obvious! When you’re the one who’s gone and run your mouth on us!”

“You’re making it sound as if I told the whole station!”

“You might as well’ve done, Jules-”

“ _Don’t_. Call me that.” It had come out harsh, choked, too fierce, and the silence that followed was a little longer than it should have been, before Julian’s comm went off.

“Sisko to Bashir.”

Julian went still, and answered, not looking at his parents’ faces. “…Bashir here.”

“Were you aware that Legate Ghemor would be coming to the station?”

Julian blinked. “I, er, just received a message this morning. He said he’d sent ahead to arrange things already, so I assumed you knew about it. Will…will it be a problem?”

He could see, out of the corner of his eye, the mystified looks on his parents’ faces, and turned away.

“No problem, doctor. It has been suggested that, as one of the few former leaders of the Cardassian Dissident Movement not killed during the Dominion takeover, he might be the ideal person to lead a Cardassian government in exile, for others opposed to the Dominion to rally around.”

Julian stopped, blinked. “I…I’m sure he’d do anything to see Cardassia free again, but it’s- it should really be his decision.”

“Can you at least tell me why he’s chosen to come here now?”

“I…rather assumed it would have something to do with Cesnil, sir. Now he knows the truth.”

“You told him?”

“It seemed unfair not to,” Julian said, and if his tone was maybe a tad too sharp, the captain didn’t comment on it, even if his tone was gentler than it should have been when he spoke again.

“I see. Thank you, doctor.”

Julian drew in a breath, and looked back at his parents. “I have an appointment in five minutes,” he said shortly. “Excuse me.”

He did not, in fact, have an appointment. It was one of the downsides of working on Deep Space Nine, that either there was nothing to do but treat scraped knees and bar brawl injuries, or he was absolutely swamped with work. A nice epidemic of something not especially dangerous, but inconvenient and time-consuming to treat, would have been just the thing to get Zimmerman to go away without any of this ever happening. No. That was unfair of him, and if there had been an epidemic he’d have been out of his mind with worry trying to get it cured and dealt with as soon as he could, and probably cursing the fact that he’d come straight from his wedding to an overburdened infirmary, but it was hard to remember that, with things the way they were.

He kept expecting to see Garak. It wasn’t rational, he knew, not with how much Garak hated spending time in the infirmary for any reason, but yet…every time someone came in, his heart stuttered in his chest, and he found himself expecting that familiar rounded scaly face, wearing an expression of open distaste. He could almost hear the words now, the accusations. That he had been using Garak this whole time, taking advantage of Garak’s trust, so rarely bestowed, and in this case so unwisely. Probably it would be quiet, and that would only make it worse, how blisteringly cruel Garak could be with a soft voice and no apparent change in expression. Possibly Garak would even claim to be impressed at the scope and the length of Julian’s deception, in that sharp, cold, precise way of his. Or perhaps he’d get home tonight to find Garak’s things gone and their quarters empty, and the paperwork for divorce in his inbox in the morning. But, when he returned to their quarters that night, Garak’s books were still on the rack, the little statuette of the Hebitian sun god still acting as a makeshift bookend, and, in the morning, he woke with Garak wrapped around him, leeching off his warmth, and knew with an awful certainty that this could not last.

Garak was downright solicitous over breakfast, and it was almost a relief to escape to the infirmary, where he could bring himself under better control without his nerves jangling every moment. It was ridiculous. He ought to have been taking advantage of every moment they had left, but every kiss, every smile, every brush of their hands at the table made him feel slightly sick with the knowledge that it was, all of it, under false pretences. How long before Garak found out? Maybe the bridal commission yesterday had eaten up enough of his time that he hadn’t been able to find out yet, but he would. Whatever evidence it was the Obsidian Order had found, Garak would find, and that would be the end of it. Garak had loved Julian in part for his honesty, for the openness Garak could not permit himself. Once he learned that was a lie, the automatic disgust at what Julian was and what he had done would destroy the rest.

Burying himself in work was enough to keep the thought at bay for the most part, but it kept creeping in around the edges, making him tense and irritable and more uneasy in his own skin than he had felt since the scales were removed and his body felt his own again. It would have been better if the blows had not come so close together. If he had lost Tekeny, but still had Garak, or lost Garak, and still had Tekeny, he might have borne it better. As it was, though, Julian could feel nothing but sick dread of what would happen when the moment finally came that he had to say goodbye to the two people he loved most in the world, knowing that they could only despise him.

He worked late, pled work when Garak came in to ask if he was free for lunch, buried himself in research papers and experiments and minor injuries until he could almost breathe easily again, trying to ignore the faint sound of voices from the office Doctor Zimmerman had commandeered to carry out his interviews. Interviewing the parents, Zimmerman had explained was to take place over multiple days – one for Amsha, one for Richard, and one for the two together. After that, his use for them would be over and Julian might have a prayer of seeing them gone. By the second day of this, Nurse Jabara was starting to give him worried looks, and Rij nearly pushed him out of the door after midnight, promising that they’d call him if anything serious happened and leaving him with nowhere to go but back to his and Garak’s quarters.

Their quarters were dark when he got in, but he could see the gleam of red eyeshine in the dark, where Garak was sitting up. Waiting for him, he thought, and something twisted in the pit of his stomach. So…this was it.

“Ah, _there_ you are. I was beginning to give up hope, doctor.”

“I was covering Doctor Tarses’ shift,” Julian said, undoing his collar and trying not to look at Garak. “He’s got a bad case of Ferengi flu, so he’s taking the week off, and it’s left us rather short-handed in the infirmary.”

“Oh, yes,” Garak said peevishly, “And you were in such desperate need of that extra pair of hands today, weren’t you? For that matter,” he added, “I don’t believe humans can contract Ferengi flu, doctor, so-”

“-Simon’s part-Romulan, his susceptibility probably came through from that side-”

“ _Simon_! I wasn’t aware you were on such friendly terms with your trainees, doctor!”

Julian blinked. “…what?”

“Not that I can complain,” Garak went on, rather sourly, “If you prefer _Simon’s_ company to mine-”

“How can I?” Julian asked, genuinely puzzled, “He’s been bedbound with Ferengi flu all week. Garak…” This didn’t seem like the prelude to a confrontation about anything serious. Julian had seen Garak angry about serious things before, and then he was he was focused, icy, calm, almost pleasant. This was…it was ordinary pettishness, the sort he’d indulged in when he found out about the secret agent games, when he’d felt Julian had been neglecting him, or when he just wanted to argue for the sake of it. “…can we not, tonight?”

Garak looked at him, and then stepped forward to pull Julian close, one hand reaching up to pet gently at Julian’s hair.

“You’ve been avoiding me, doctor,” he said into Julian’s ear.

“I know.” Julian swallowed. “I’m sorry. I’m just…on edge, I suppose.”

Garak’s grip on him tightened a little. “Your parents?”

Julian nodded against his shoulder. Why not? It was half true.

“I took the liberty of listening in on their sessions with Doctor Zimmerman,” Garak went on, and Julian could hear the disdain in his voice, “There was a great deal that might not have pleased you, but nothing, I believe, that could be called incriminating.”

Julian froze. “Incriminating?” he said, his throat gone abruptly dry.

Garak sighed. “You did not warn them away from giving Doctor Zimmerman any _openings_ because you feared embarrassment, my dear.”

“I nearly had you arrested once because I didn’t want to admit I was playing spy games,” Julian reminded him.

“But you didn’t. And we had a wonderful time, as I said we would.”

Julian snorted, “Half the command staff nearly died, you got shot and I ended up destroying the world.”

“Well, yes, but other than that it was quite enjoyable.”

“You spent the whole time complaining.”

Garak widened his eyes theatrically, “But I _did_ agree to join you for another such diversion at the end of it, did I not?”

“Which you proceeded to complain all the way through.”

“A few minor editorial comments on the inaccuracies of the genre…”

“It isn’t _supposed_ to be accurate,” Julian reminded him, rolling his eyes. It was far too easy to slip back into this. It was going to hurt, when Garak knew the truth, and Julian would have no-one to blame but himself.

He pulled away when Garak tried to kiss him and forced a rather wan smile.

“I can’t- I have to be up in five hours, my shift- Please, I can’t.”

Garak blinked at that, his expression hurt, almost confused. “I shan’t force you,” he said, rather stiffly, “You don’t need to _beg_ , my dear.”

“It’s not…”

“You don’t need to explain yourself, either, doctor, I quite understand.”

It felt strange, uneasy, lying in the same bed as Garak, not touching each other at all. He could see, in the dark, Garak’s armoured back, the patterned ridges and scales of his mec’hUt, shoulders hunched as he curled in on himself, trying to make himself the smallest possible target. Julian wanted to reach out and touch him, didn’t quite dare.

Exhausted as he was, it was a long time before he slept that night.

The next day, the Legate arrived.

Julian hadn’t volunteered to be one of the group that would be meeting him when he arrived on the station, but it had been generally assumed that he would want to without his noticing, and if Jadzia had told Commander Sisko about the severing of that connection, he gave no sign of it. But then, if it were done when ‘tis done, ‘twere well it were done quickly, and all that. And at least it got him away from his parents.

It had been too much to hope, of course, that one dinner and the fight in his office would be the last he saw of them. Two days of non-stop work had at least given him an excuse not to stray into public areas too often, but today Garak had coaxed a promise of lunch out of him before Julian left to start his shift, and when he left the infirmary they were there. Waiting. His heart stuttered a moment in his chest.

“There you are, Jules!” Richard said loudly, the jocular note scraping along Julian’s nerves like a set of keys pulled across a violin-string. “Your mother and I were wondering if you’d join us for-”

“I can’t,” Julian said, before Richard could talk any louder, draw any more attention – already, they were starting to get curious looks from passers-by – “I’m meeting Garak, and then I have to join Dax and Major Kira in the docking ring to meet- to meet Legate Ghemor.”

“That’s a Cardassian rank, isn’t it?” Richard said, frowning.

“He’s a Cardassian dissident leader.”

Richard made a derisive noise in his throat, “That usual, for a station CMO to be sent to meet political visitors?”

“This one’s a special case,” Julian said shortly.

“Well, then,” Richard said, smiling wide, wheedling. “If it’s not an emergency…”

“It doesn’t matter whether or not it’s an emergency,” Julian said shortly. “I can’t shirk off my responsibilities to spend time with you.” And even if he could, he wouldn’t. He’d drawn the early shift in the infirmary today, five until two, and was on call for the rest of the day. Truthfully, he was on call every day, and his hours had always been flexible enough, during slow times, even if the trade-off was that whenever there was anything serious going on, he wasn’t likely to catch more than a few hours’ sleep at a time for weeks. Right now, the infirmary was almost dead, and even if it hadn’t been, Simon Tarses had reported to work this morning, still a little green around the gills, but, he had assured Julian, quite capable of working his usual hours and even covering for Julian. His entire staff seemed to be conspiring to let him make the most of his family visit, and if it hadn’t been so entirely unwanted, he might have been touched. As it was, he’d probably still spend most of the day in his office, trying to get that prion replication experiment to make sense, if nothing more pressing came up.

“You might’ve applied for a bit of time, if you’d only thought ahead for once-”

“But I didn’t,” Julian cut him off. “Excuse me.”

He was twitchy and distracted all through lunch, and nearly lost the thread of their conversation twice, even though the text they’d chosen for the week – a Trill historical novel that Jadzia had recommended shortly before Julian was taken by the Dominion – was a relatively simple one. Garak didn’t even comment, which was worrying all by itself. Garak under other circumstances would never have hesitated to make some sarcastic remark about Julian’s disengagement, or about how, clearly, his months’ captivity had taken more of a toll on his faculties than Garak had thought, given his inability to concentrate on even this most frivolous of texts. Garak quiet was unsettling, uneasy, wrong. Julian wanted to be teased out of himself just now, wanted something to pull his mind away from what he knew was coming, but he couldn’t come out and say so without putting more pressure on Garak, and…and it didn’t seem fair to ask, with everything else he’d asked Garak to put up with already since their marriage. Maybe Sisko and Miles and the rest had been right, maybe they had rushed into this. It hadn’t felt that way, at the time, but now…now, Garak seemed to be slipping farther away from him with every word and every look and every smile, and Julian didn’t know how to bridge the gap.

Time seemed to be out of joint, that day, because lunch was over almost before Julian knew it had started, or so it felt, and then he had to get up and go to the turbolift, to meet Kira and Jadzia and exchange commonplaces as they rode down to the docking ring. The important thing was to focus on the surface. Right now, that meant the way to the docking ring, or Jadzia’s utter failure at getting Major Kira to engage with the Pre-Surak Vulcan holoprogramme that had been her latest pick. Personally, Julian felt the image of the Major as a pre-Surakian warlord was disturbingly easy to picture, but maybe that had been part of the problem. The seconds dragged on – could it really be taking this long to reach the docking ring? Julian wanted, at once, for this all to be over, and that the wait would go on until the heat death of the universe, thus sparing him…whatever conversation it was he was about to face.

It would be easier if Tekeny were angry. His message hadn’t sounded that way, though it was always hard to tell with text, but it would have made things…simple. But the sort of straightforward, ‘nobody’s-fault’ parting of the ways that seemed most probable, would be worse. The thought of his father- of Tekeny hating him was bad enough, but Julian was used to that. He had one father who despised him already, for not being whatever it was Richard Bashir had thought he was buying twenty-five years ago, he could live with being hated. But the thought of Tekeny’s indifference was worse. Hatred, at least, would meant there was still something there to bind them.

The doors opened. The docking ring was grey and mundane and just the same as it always was. How long ago had it been that Julian had been the one getting off a fast shuttle from Mathenis, Garak at his side, giddily delighted with himself and with Garak despite knowing that a full-scale war couldn’t be far off, now Cardassia had fallen. It felt like years.

“I suppose he’s going to expect full diplomatic privileges,” Kira grumbled, “If this ‘government in exile’ idea works, I don’t see that we’re going to have much choice.”

“He might not,” Dax reminded her, “The political angle wasn’t his idea, after all. So far as he knows, he’s just here for a private visit.”

Kira grimaced. Dissident or not, Tekeny was Cardassian, and even if she’d softened a little in the face of Aamin Marritza and Tora Ziyal, she’d probably never be entirely comfortable with them. Not that she should be, Julian reminded himself hastily. He’d had to be particularly careful of that, these last few years, when he hadn’t known whether they were his own people or not.

“Well, I suppose anyone’s a step up from the Dominion,” Kira muttered, “Though if he was such a big deal before, why wasn’t he running things when the civilians were in charge?”

“He wasn’t allowed back,” Julian said shortly. At first, it had been ‘not invited’, and his- and the Legate was far too cautious, and too courteous, a person to force the issue by returning uninvited to Cardassian space. Still, the news had been good, Garak said. Well, good from Julian’s perspective – Garak had watched the whole thing unfold stone-faced, already mourning the Cardassia he had served. But there had been just a handful of deaths, the transfer of power had been smooth, and Julian had hoped every day that this time, Tekeny’s next message would tell him that he had been invited back to Cardassia. Garak’s sources had seemed to support the idea, even if Garak’s utter horror at the thought of _graffiti_ in the streets of Kardasi’or calling for Tekeny’s return had sent Julian into fits of helpless laughter, back when he’d still thought that Cardassia’s change of government might actually mean the will of the Cardassian people would finally be paid more than lip service. Tekeny had even seemed to share his hopes, even as Garak grew more and more uneasy. Then they’d heard about the massacre in the Torr Sector, and all that hope had died. Julian had been furious, Garak hardly less so – Cardassians massacring Cardassians in the open street like animals? Behind closed doors hardly seemed better to Julian, but for Garak, it had been unthinkable to do it in such a way. “Meya Rejal was afraid of losing power in open elections,” he said sourly. “She knew she wouldn’t be the first choice, if- if Legate Ghemor were an option.”

Jadzia gave him a knowing look at that – he _knew_ he was biased, but that had been the gist of what he’d heard – but Major Kira just snorted.

“Politicians,” she muttered.

Julian gave a wan little smile. “I’m not going to disagree.”

They were nearly at the shuttle bay now. It was ridiculous of him to feel this worried. He’d seen Tekeny just a few weeks ago, in person, their ties were already severed. Nothing that would happen here was going to change any of that, and so there was no _point_ in worrying. Unfortunately, the tightness in his throat and the nervous tension in his spine could not be so easily talked away. At this distance, he could _hear_ the docking clamps engaging, if he concentrated, beneath the normal hum of the station, beneath Kira and Jadzia’s voices, and the voices of the rest of the crew in the docking ring. His stomach clenched.

It would have been easier if there had been a conversation to distract himself with, but Kira was quiet and…not quite fuming, yet, but close – Cardassians _per se_ she might object to less than she once had, but Tekeny had been part of the Central Command long enough to have had some power during the Occupation, even if he had opposed it – and Dax calm and expectant and making Julian feel all the worse by comparison. Why was it taking so long? He’d heard the docking clamps engage, and it didn’t take _that_ long to get off a commercial shuttle, even these overnight ones, where there was usually at least the journey’s worth of baggage to worry about. Mathenis to Bajor wasn’t a popular shuttle route, and even if it had been, few chose to stop off at Deep Space Nine who didn’t have some pressing business there. There were one or two Mathenites, a human and a Benzite who passed them by, casting alarmed and wary looks at the Starfleet delegation waiting at the shuttle bay entrance, before Julian caught sight of the familiar grey face in the middle distance.

Tekeny looked older even than he had done the last time Julian had seen him, was the first thought. His posture was as upright as ever, and of course rings under the eyes weren’t the tell they were with humans, but by the look of it, he hadn’t been sleeping well, and he looked thinner, more worn-down, almost ill. It had only been a few weeks – had the news hit him so hard? A wave of guilt washed over Julian at the sight. He ought to have found a better way to deliver the news, he thought, but every moment he’d waited would be another moment that there was no hope of re-starting the search for Cesnil.

“Legate Ghemor,” Kira said, rather stiffly, stepping forward. “I’m Major Kira Nerys. Welcome to Deep Space Nine.”

“Thank you,” Tekeny said, giving a polite nod. “This is quite a reception for one old man,” he added, setting down his bag and looking around inquisitively at Dax and Julian, who stared down at his boots, wishing that the floor would swallow him. “I hope I won’t prove too great a disappointment.”

“No,” Kira said quickly, harshly, “It was Commander Sisko’s idea, given your…role…in the Cardassian dissident movement. Given your…communications…with the movement before the Central Command fell, he’s rather hoping you might be willing to continue those efforts against the Dominion.”

“I see,” Tekeny said. Was it Julian’s imagination, or did he look uneasy?

Kira nodded again, “This is our science officer, Lieutenant Commander Jadzia Dax,” she said, stepping away, “And of course you know Doctor Bashir.”

“Of course,” Tekeny said, more warmly than Julian had expected, but by the time he thought to look up, Tekeny had moved on to shake Jadzia’s offered hand. “Well,” he said, turning to Kira, “It was a pleasure meeting both of you, but if you don’t mind, I’m afraid the journey here was a little…draining.”

“Of course,” Kira said, sounding honestly relieved. “Guest quarters have been arranged – Doctor, would you?”

Julian nodded, and picked up Tekeny’s bag, not looking at either of them. “This way.”

They walked in silence until they reached the turbolift at the far end of the docking bay, every step making the knot of tension between Julian’s shoulder-blades draw tighter. He ought to have made an excuse, he thought. He ought to have asked Dax if she would volunteer, just to make things a little easier for both of them. It was too hard, like this, to avoid falling into old habits.

“I had thought you didn’t have any human family left to you,” Tekeny said, when they were nearly at the turbolift. It would have been easier if it sounded like an accusation. As it was, there was nothing in his voice but gentle inquiry, but Julian nearly flinched all the same.

“We hadn’t spoken in fourteen years before this,” Julian admitted. “I- We were never- I’m something of a disappointment to them, I’m afraid.”

The moment he said it, he wished he hadn’t. It always sounded like he was fishing for sympathy.

“I can hardly credit that,” Tekeny said in a low voice.

“I don’t know why you think I’d make it up!” Julian snapped, and then forced himself to calm again. “I’m sorry. The last thing you need right now is me-”

“Julian.”

Julian stopped dead.

“I do not think you are lying. But I cannot understand what any parent could find in you to be ashamed of.”

Julian felt heat rush to his face, and coughed and looked down at his boots to cover it.

“I haven’t been able to start the search for Cesnil yet,” he admitted, “I keep meaning to, but between work and the LMH programme…I wish I had better news for you.”

Tekeny drew in a sharp breath, and for a moment it was impossible to miss the pain drawn in every line of his face. “He is dead, then.”

“Not necessarily,” Julian said quickly, “We’ve only just started looking, and he could be _anywhere_ in the Federation – I can start with the class lists at the Academy for the year after mine and go from there.”

“I’ve…made my own attempts,” Tekeny said quietly, “Perhaps with fewer resources, but I am afraid ‘inconclusive’ was not quite certain enough for me.”

Julian blinked. “Oh,” he said in a small voice. “You mean…you knew?”

“No. But I could not rule out the other possibilities.” Tekeny sighed. “The Obsidian Order were not an organisation to waste a useful agent, as Alin was all too eager to remind me, once the true purpose of your arrival on Cardassia was made clear.”

Julian swallowed. “We can keep searching,” he said, “Something might come up. That is…if you’ll let me.”

“I would be grateful, if you would.” It was Tekeny’s turn, now, to take a great deal of interest in the closed turbolift doors. “In your message…you said you didn’t anticipate that we would see each other again. If I misunderstood, and you’d rather not continue our acquaintance…I am sorry.” He smiled, a little sadly. “You already knew I was a selfish old man, but I find I cannot so easily accept the loss of one of the few members of my family that remain to me.”

Julian froze. “…you mean that?” he said stupidly, his heart beating double-time, wishing he could quell the absurd swell of hope that was building in him now.

“I do.” Tekeny met his eyes, “If you would rather I-”

“No!” Julian swallowed against the desire to beam so widely it felt it might split his face in two. “No. I don’t want that. I just…didn’t think it was possible. I mean…the prevailing attitude to adoptive relationships on Cardassia-”

“It is not…usual…certainly,” Tekeny allowed, “But the usual way of thinking on Cardassia was what led us to this pass, and that cannot continue.”

The turbolift stopped then at the habitat ring, which was all that kept Julian from doing something wildly embarrassing like hugging Tekeny then and there.

“Um, this way,” he said again, his heart feeling strangely lighter already, despite all the problems that he knew would have to come from this. “There should still be some Cardassian food in the replicators, or if there isn’t I can probably find you the programming codes. Um…you’re supposed to have twenty-six-hour computer access, too, but I don’t know if that’s been worked out yet…”

“I’m sure I’ll manage,” Tekeny said warmly, and winced, then, suddenly, as if in pain.

“Are you all right?” Julian asked. This wasn’t the first time he’d seen that tic. It had turned up more than once during his leave on Mathenis, even if Tekeny had passed it off as just the cold, or the light, or one of the other manifold minor discomforts of his life in exile. But the station was warmer than Mathenis in winter, and less overwhelmingly bright, and Julian…Julian had thought that Tekeny seemed ill.

“Fine,” Tekeny said, giving a slightly pained smile. “Headaches, I’m afraid – the journey was rather more tiring than I had thought. You needn’t worry about me. What about you? You mentioned this hologram project in your message – what precisely does that involve?”

It was an obvious change of subject, but this wasn’t a conversation to be having in a public corridor, and so Julian duly filled him on the details in as they made their way towards the guest section of the habitat ring. They attracted no small number of stares on the way over, which Julian supposed was only natural, but it was mid-afternoon, and the habitat ring wasn’t as packed as during the evening or early morning, when people were going home to bed.

Tekeny’s guest quarters were on the same corridor as Julian’s parents’. It was hard to see that as anything but a cruel joke on the part of the universe, but just then Julian was too relieved to care.

“This is you,” he said, once they were there. “Um. I should let you rest, if the journey really was that draining. Could- Would you like to join Garak and I for dinner, tonight? If you’re feeling up to it, I mean?”

“I’m not quite that decrepit yet,” Tekeny said, sounding quite amused now. “I’d be delighted.”

“Great,” Julian said, and the warmth of that relief was almost enough to let him forget all the other problems that Doctor Zimmerman’s project had dredged to the surface.


	4. Chapter 4

Nobody was ever quite ready for a red alert when they were off-duty. On-duty, you could get used to it, but going from drinking springwine and trying to explain prion replication research to two avowed non-scientists to being called to battle stations was never going to be an easy transition. As it was, he was nearly at the infirmary when the order came to stand down, and when he was this close he might as well try and find out what the emergency was and whether his assistance was really going to be necessary. As it was, the infirmary was nearly deserted, and Rij shook her head at him when he reached her.

“No idea what it is,” she admitted, “They just said report to battle stations, so I started handing out medkits.”

“You did the right thing.” Julian frowned. “They’d have said if it were a false alarm…”

But the order to stand down wouldn’t have come if there had been an immediate threat, either. He went to check their supplies anyway, just for something to do, even though he could remember the contents as they had been before he left that evening down to the last hypospray. As it was, he was midway through that when the next call came in.

“Doctor Bashir?”

“Captain?”

A breath over the comlink, and then. “I’ve been trying to reach Legate Ghemor for the past ten minutes – is he with you?”

Julian blinked. “I last saw him in my quarters, before the red alert came in,” he supplied, an awful suspicion creeping over him.

“If you could ask him to join us in my office? There are representatives of the Dominion here who want to speak with him.”

Julian nodded, a little shakily, and swallowed against the dryness of his throat. “I’ll talk to him.”

The walk back to his quarters felt a lot shorter than the scramble to get to the infirmary before had done. Cardassia was the best part of two days away at warp nine – Dukat must have had advance warning. Not that it would have been hard to get – Tekeny had booked passage on a public passenger shuttle, hopelessly exposed. Even coming from a Federation protectorate like Mathenis, the risk…why hadn’t Julian thought about any of this before? Too wrapped up in his own worries to think about what Tekeny coming to the station would mean, that had been his problem, and now they had the Dominion on their doorstep and there was nothing he could _do_ about it. Nothing but wait, and hope Captain Sisko did the right thing. He would, Julian told himself. He _had_ to. But then…sometimes he couldn’t. Might this prove to be one of those times? It had happened before, more often than Julian liked to think of.

When he got back to his and Garak’s quarters, Tekeny was standing by the far window, Garak busying himself with something over by the table, both of them not talking in that deliberate way that meant they’d probably had a disagreement while Julian was away. He supposed it was only fortunate that they were at least trying to be civil – he and Tekeny had fought before about Garak, after the incident at the Founders’ planet. Both incidents, Julian should say, and he knew they’d probably never see eye to eye.

“The Dominion are here,” Julian said, almost before the door slid closed behind him. “Dukat, probably, and whoever the Dominion has pulling his strings. They’re here, and they’re asking to speak to you.”

Tekeny nodded, looking…not happy, but not surprised either. “I had expected a few days’ grace before they arrived here,” he said, sounding frustrated, “I suppose my travel arrangements were less private than I had endeavoured to make them.”

Garak sniffed. “Federation passenger transports are often that way, Legate,” he said dryly, not looking around. “Most Federation civilian facilities are – on our last holiday, there was even a minor terrorist attack involving a planet’s environmental controls.”

“It was basically harmless,” Julian said hastily, “Just a few days of unexpected rain and a few thousand ruined holidays. It’s been dealt with.”

“…and to achieve this, they mounted a terrorist attack?” Tekeny said, sounding quite bemused.

Julian winced. “It’s a very long story.”

“We went on a holiday in Federation space, Lieutenant Commander Dax and Commander Worf had a minor disagreement, and the Commander decided to involve himself with a local terrorist group to vent his frustrations,” Garak said acidly. “Quite how the man is still in Starfleet after all that…”

“Are you going to meet with Dukat?” Julian asked, cutting Garak off.

Tekeny nodded. “I think so. I should like to get the measure of this Dominion and its representatives.” There was a hard edge to his voice now, that Julian had only heard a handful of times before.

“I’ll go with you,” Julian replied, trying not to fidget, “If I can. If _I_ can think of using this as a pretext for an assassination attempt, so can Dukat.”

“I hardly think Dukat is capable of imagining half the things you have thought of, my dear,” Garak said, with a faint, strained smile, “But in this case, I fear you may be correct.”

Tekeny made an irritated hiss in the back of his throat. “I have been avoiding assassination attempts from better men than Dukat for most of my life,” he reminded Julian.

“Maybe, but I’d still like to be there, if you’ll allow it.” Julian forced a quick smile. “Anyway, prompt medical response might be necessary, even if he doesn’t succeed.”

“You don’t need to worry about me, Julian.”

“Nor you over me, but that’s never stopped you before.”

“That’s different,” Tekeny said shortly, “You’re my son, it’s practically my duty.”

Julian was unable to suppress a real smile at that. “Unfortunately for you, that duty goes both ways. Besides, I’m your doctor for as long as you’re on this station, and that makes your continued survival my responsibility.”

Garak was staring down at the table now, and had gone very still. Julian felt an odd twinge of guilt. Tain had not been an affectionate parent, that much had been clear, but Garak had loved him, even more than he had hated him, and now he was gone, and the wound still fresh. They’d never talked about it, before. Perhaps they should, but Julian hadn’t yet been able to figure out how to open the discussion, and Garak had never even tried.

“Very well,” Tekeny relented. “If you think it will be necessary.”

Julian tipped his head slightly to the side. “Let’s just say that I’d rather go, and be proved wrong, than decide it won’t be necessary and then be proved wrong about that instead.”

Garak made an amused noise at that, not quite a hiss, and gave Julian a look of pure, unconvincing innocence when Julian looked around at him and, for a moment, things between them felt almost normal, almost _right_ again, before Julian remembered everything else that stood between them, and hastily looked away.

“You are growing cynical in your old age, doctor,” Garak said teasingly.

Julian couldn’t meet his eyes. “You should be proud of yourself, then, since it’s probably all down to your influence.”

“Would that it were so,” Garak sighed. Julian tensed. He couldn’t quite help himself. He could feel Garak’s eyes on him now, attracted by the subtle shift – stupid of him, really, to expect that Garak would miss it – but Garak didn’t say anything, just turned away, back to the replicator. “You had better go. While I might relish any and all inconveniences that might befall Gul Dukat, it would be best not to give him a reason to take offence, in the present climate.”

“He hardly needs one,” Tekeny muttered, giving Garak a sharp look. “But I take your point.”

The walk to Ops was tense and silent, and once again, Julian could see the shadow of pain on Tekeny’s face. He would have to try and talk his father into visiting the infirmary before he went back to Mathenis – there were perfectly competent Mathenite doctors there, he knew, but Tekeny…he’d put his work first, as he always did, and the work would just mount up and mount up until his own health was at the very bottom of his list of priorities, and one day living like that would kill him. Well, it wasn’t going to be any time soon, if Julian had anything to say about it. They passed a few people on the way over – it wasn’t even really late yet – and had to share the turbolift with a bickering Bolian couple who were heading for the Promenade, but when they surfaced into Ops, there was a skeleton crew on duty, but most of the senior staff – Miles, Dax, Kira – were there, and a pair of surly-looking and heavily armed Jem’Hadar who had certainly come over with the Dominion delegation. No other- no Cardassians but Tekeny, which struck Julian as a bad sign already, the latest in a long string of them since the news of the massacre in Torr.

“Julian?” Miles asked tentatively, eyes flicking from Julian to Tekeny and back again. “Uh…”

Julian was uncomfortably aware of how many eyes were on him. It wasn’t as if at least the senior staff hadn’t _known_ he was still in touch with Tekeny, he reminded himself. He’d tried to avoid referring to Tekeny as his father around them too obviously, just in case they took it upon themselves to remind him that he had a father already – as if he hadn’t been trying for fourteen years to ignore that same fact! – but they’d all known where he spent his leave, and it had never been Earth.

Julian made a hasty ‘leave it’ gesture, before the doors to Captain Sisko’s office opened, and Tekeny seemed to gather himself together. Julian had not often seen his father come the Legate – it wasn’t a situation that often came up, on his leave visits or during their weekly calls over subspace – but now, for the first time, he felt he was maybe getting a sense of why it was the Obsidian Order had gone to such lengths to remove him.

Tekeny swept into Sisko’s office with Julian in his wake, and he did, very definitely, ‘sweep’. It was pure bravado, Julian knew – Tekeny was unarmed, dressed in comfortable ship-knits, exiled and held no formal power at all – but the effect, nonetheless, was good, catching Dukat mid-sentence in what looked like another smooth-voiced, self-satisfied monologue, by the barely-hidden exhaustion and distaste on Captain Sisko’s face.

“I see your choice of company has not improved since the last time we spoke,” Tekeny said, as the doors slid shut behind them, his eyes fixed coldly on Dukat, who gave a slightly forced, untrustworthy smile.

“Nor your famed talent for diplomacy, Ghemor.”

Even Julian had to concentrate to avoid snorting at that. By Cardassian standards, he knew, Tekeny was remarkably blunt. He’d survived what would otherwise have been a fatal defect in a high-ranking officer and occasional politician by being competent, yes, but also by relying on the common assumption that having a reputation for being blunt and plain-spoken and not especially diplomatic meant that one lacked any talent for deception at all.

“Legate Ghemor,” the Vorta at Dukat’s side cut in smoothly – was that Weyoun? Or just another Vorta who happened to resemble him? Weyoun had been dead, last Julian had heard, though, and the odds of his survival had been astronomical – “I cannot tell you how delighted I am to meet you at last. You appear to have made a _remarkable_ impression on the Cardassian people.”

Tekeny gave the Vorta a long, cold look. “As have you,” he said icily. “I heard the news of your purges on Mathenis.”

Alin had been nearly beside herself when she reached them. Julian couldn’t blame her. Meya Rejal had been…far from ideal, as a political leader. Julian could not quite forget that she had been the one to order the butchery in the Torr Sector, and could not mourn her death as Tekeny had, but the slaughter that had followed the end of civilian rule was, Garak had informed him the night they had heard the whole story, unequalled in Cardassian political history. Garak had been pale and shaking that night, as only Julian ever saw him, and had curled against Julian and buried his face in his neck as if trying to shut out the whole world until all that was left was the two of them in the dark of their shared room. The thought brought a sudden sharp pang of guilt and longing, at the thought of how few such moments they must have left.

“Disloyalty to the state cannot be allowed, Ghemor,” Dukat said, shaking his head, “The Five and the Detapa Council were weakening Cardassia, and even then, I had enough mercy to allow Pa’Dar to live, as best he might.”

Tekeny bristled. “They showed more loyalty to Cardassia than you have, handing our people over to the Dominion!” he snapped back. “How long do you imagine it will be before we turn from ‘allies’ to ‘servants’, Dukat? I had known you were a self-serving egotist, but I had not taken you for a fool!”

“He doesn’t seem to like you very much,” the Vorta said, as an aside, with a slightly pained smile to Dukat. “We are going to have to do something about your public image.” He turned that untrustworthy smile on Tekeny. “But, whatever you may believe about the Dominion, you may rest assured, Legate, that it is baseless. The Federation will insist on attributing the most sordid of motives to the Founders’ actions. We simply want what is best for Cardassia. Did you not also profess that same goal?”

“I suspect we may have very different ideas of what the best thing for Cardassia is.”

Captain Sisko cleared his throat. “As I recall, Dukat, you had an offer to make.” The unspoken ‘so if you could please stop posturing and make it, then get out of my office’ was clearly audible in every word.

Dukat gave him a very nasty look at that, but the Vorta just smiled again.

“Well, then,” he said, “What better way to steer the future of Cardassia than to participate in our new government? Return, with us, to Cardassia.”

Tekeny glared at him. “I have wanted nothing better than to return to Cardassia these last two years,” he admitted. “But to return now, to as good as admit that I support this- this travesty you have made of my people?” he shook his head.

“Perhaps you might take some time to consider-” the Vorta started.

“There is nothing to _be_ considered. My answer is no.”

The Vorta did not seem at all offended. “Perhaps-”

“You heard him,” Julian said. Dukat and the Vorta looked around – they didn’t seem to have noticed he was there, before.

“And what is your stake in this, _doctor_?” Dukat nearly spat, glaring, before turning back to Tekeny, “Legate, would it alter your decision at all if I were to settle a question for you? This- _person_ …is not your son. Cesnil remains undercover, and we might tell you where, if you were to cooperate.”

Julian froze, and saw Tekeny stiffen and go still too as the words hit him. “Cesnil?” he repeated, his voice raw, “I-”

“If he’s still undercover, they can’t touch him,” Julian said quietly.

Dukat glared at him. “We were able to capture _you_ , were we not?”

“When you still had an intelligence service worth the name, yes,” Julian said levelly.

Whatever he might think of the Obsidian Order – and certainly he had very little good to say of it – it had at least been _competent_. Alin’s description of the Bureau she had headed, which she’d been forced to strip to the bone in response to Rejal’s accusations, had made it sound far less corrupt, but also far less effective. Dominion intelligence was better, but if they played for time, maybe they could find Cesnil first. He stamped down hard on the thought of what would happen if they did – he’d never had siblings before, but sibling rivalry with someone he had never met and had no real connection to was a bit much even for him – and turned his attention back to Tekeny, who looked for a moment stricken before steeling himself again.

“I want to believe you, Dukat,” he admitted, his voice rough, “But even if I did…you and I might have come to an agreement, one Cardassian to another, but now dealing with you means dealing with them, and that makes the price too high.”

Dukat took a sharp step forward.

“You wanted an answer,” Julian said, stepping up at his father’s right hand to glare at Dukat over Tekeny’s shoulder. “You have one.”

Tekeny caught his eye, and nodded slightly. “Good evening, Dukat,” he said, in the sort of tone more often used to express such sentiments as ‘take a long walk out of a short airlock’ or ‘Mr Bond, what an unexpected surprise’.

“My ship will be docked here a few days longer,” Dukat said, and even though Cardassians couldn’t go white with rage, Julian got the sense he would’ve done.

“In case you change your mind,” the Vorta – who really was quite uncannily like the late unlamented Weyoun – added, smiling the oiliest smile Julian had ever seen.

“I won’t,” Tekeny said, quietly, but firmly, and nodded politely to Captain Sisko, who returned it and, together, they left the office, under the eyes of what seemed like the entire night shift crew of Ops. Julian didn’t want to imagine the stories that would be going around the station after tonight. He’d never told many people about his continuing links to Cardassia – Garak had been hard enough for most of his patients to swallow – but the thought of not being there had been harder. Tekeny didn’t need his protection, but that didn’t change the fact that Julian felt better for being there, for having a part to play.

“The captain will want to talk to you tomorrow about the government-in-exile idea, I expect,” he said once they were a safe distance away from Ops. “Or someone else will. I don’t really know what goes into these things.”

“I expect so.”

Julian steeled himself. “Do you know what you’ll do?”

There was a meditative pause, and then.

“I think I must do this, Julian,” Tekeny said in a low voice. “If I can. Cardassia…” he shook his head. “From what I have heard, the Dominion are still viewed as a relieving force on Cardassia. They don’t know the full truth yet, and Garak’s word would not be enough to convince them that their new allies plan on wiping us out as soon as our usefulness is past.”

“If you’re lucky,” Julian reminded him. “Dead or turned into something like the Jem’Hadar or the Vorta – which would be worse, do you think?”

Tekeny’s mouth twisted. “My word still has some sway on Cardassia,” he said, “If I can do nothing else, I must do this-” he broke off with an odd, hitching gasp, and Julian moved instinctively to steady him.

“Careful,” he said. “Father-” The word slipped out by force of habit. “-I think you had better come to the infirmary now. You’re obviously not-”

Tekeny waved him off. “I’m fine. Only…tired. These sorts of political encounters…aren’t something I’ve kept in the habit of.”

“But this isn’t something that’s just started now, is it?” Julian retorted, “You’ve been looking ill since before the wedding, and it’s been getting worse. At least for my peace of mind, you need to see a doctor. It doesn’t have to be me, even!”

Tekeny gave him a sidelong look. “Very well, then,” he said, sounding…maybe a little exasperated? Was Julian pushing? Well, it was his _job_ to push, in this case, and these attacks were worrying, no matter how much Tekeny tried to pass them off as insignificant.

“Now?”

The look Tekeny gave him just then was fond and reproachful and faintly amused all at once, second-tongue reflecting all three, “Perhaps not this very instant. I’d hate to drag your staff from their beds at this hour, when this can wait until morning.”

Julian frowned. “I thought you were going to be in meetings all day.” Governments-in-exile, after all, did not establish themselves. There was the Bajoran government to deal with, exiled contacts across the Quadrant to be called in, and all of this with Gul Dukat and Weyoun lurking around.

“I expect I will,” Tekeny admitted. “But if it means this much to you, I can make time for one check-up.”

Julian mentally ran through his appointments for the next day. There weren’t many. “I can manage any time between about oh-nine-hundred and lunchtime,” he offered. “And most of my afternoon is open for medical consults.”

Tekeny nodded, “I should be able to spare enough time around midday – most of my contacts are in exile by now, or else unreachable, so the time differences should allow for it.”

“I’ll be ready.” They were just coming up on the corridor Tekeny’s guest quarters were on, now. The corridor Julian’s parents – the biological set – were staying on, too. Julian couldn’t help but feel slightly uneasy about that. It was an absurd suspicion, he reminded himself – if they had not incriminated him to Doctor Zimmerman, they were vanishingly unlikely to do so to a Cardassian stranger. But the corridor was empty, and soon enough they were at the door to Tekeny’s guest quarters.

“Well,” Julian said, with a relieved smile, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Tekeny agreed. “Goodnight.”

Julian turned to go, but he was not halfway down the corridor before a door hissed open behind him.

“I hadn’t known you had other Cardassian connections.”

It was Zimmerman.

Julian shrugged and turned to face him. “If Starfleet Medical has no objection to my having _married_ a Cardassian, I don’t see what difference having a few Cardassian friends makes.”

Zimmerman frowned. “It does imply your ties to the former Cardassian Union are rather stronger than you made them sound. I was under the impression Legate Ghemor was formerly a member of their Central Command?”

“He’s with the dissident movement,” Julian corrected, “Or he was. And he’s certainly no friend to the Dominion.”

“That doesn’t make him an ally of the Federation.”

Julian snorted. “It makes him an ally of anyone willing to stand against the people currently occupying his home planet, and since he’s living in a Federation protectorate, I think we can safely say he isn’t plotting to undermine us. Now, if you’ll excuse me-”

“Do you think he would be open to an interview with me?” Zimmerman pressed.

Julian paused, halfway through turning to go. “You’d have to ask him.”

“Perhaps I will. Would you consider him an important part of your life?”

“I would.”

Zimmerman nodded. “Then I expect I’ll have to. I’ve received quite contradictory reports of your character over the last few days. I thought you said you weren’t close to your family?”

“I’m not.”

“Your father appears to disagree with you.”

Julian raised his eyebrows. “...does he?” he asked, trying to sound unconcerned. What had Richard said? All right, a bit of self-aggrandisement was only to be expected, but how could anyone get ‘close’ out of fourteen years in which he’d gone out of his way to make sure they couldn’t get hold of him?

“He does claim to be the reason you went into medicine,” Zimmerman went on, with a smug little smirk. “I believe you had your answer down as ‘desire to help people’?”

“That’s right, yes.” Julian crossed his arms. “And since my-” ‘My father’, was what he meant to say, but the words just wouldn’t come. “Since Richard would’ve preferred me to go into pro tennis, or at least the command track, if I _had_ to join Starfleet, I’d take anything he claims about it with a whole cellar of salt.”

“Really.” Zimmerman’s tone was flatly sceptical. “Most families would prefer to have a doctor in the family, given the mortality rate on the command track, and just how few tennis players do well enough be really noteworthy.” He paused, and added, “You call him ‘Richard’?”

“I do now.”

Zimmerman gave a thoughtful little hum. “When was the last time you spoke to your parents?”

“Yesterday,” Julian said shortly.

“Before they came here?” Zimmerman pressed.

Julian went still. No, no, this was getting too close. Plenty of people didn’t get along with their parents, but the sort of near-total estrangement he’d had with his was much rarer. “Is that relevant?”

Zimmerman looked down his nose at him. “I am attempting to create a holographic replica of you, that will need to interact with a crew, possibly for years on end,” he said. “ _Everything_ is relevant.”

Julian rubbed his face. “Not since the Academy,” he said miserably. The exact length was too precise, would raise too many questions, but ‘not since the Academy’ could mean anything from five years to the fourteen it had actually been, so long as Zimmerman didn’t ask too many more questions.

“Is that in-person or subspace calls?” Zimmerman went on, rather officiously, producing a PADD and jotting something down.

Julian shifted uneasily. “Both.”

“Well, I can see why you said you weren’t close,” Zimmerman muttered, “If you could please tell your father to try and confine himself to the facts in future…”

Julian didn’t like to imagine what Richard would say to that. “Is he going to have to re-do the interview?”

“What- No, of course not. I can’t use an unreliable source for this sort of thing.”

Julian took a breath. “I see. So, there’s no real reason for them to stay any longer?”

“If they’d wanted to leave, they could have done so as soon as their interviews were over,” Zimmerman reminded him, rather tetchily. “I can only presume they’re here because they want to be.”

Julian didn’t really have anything to say to that. Apparently, neither did Zimmerman, because he turned away without another world, and disappeared back into his quarters. It was almost a relief, except that now Julian had to worry about how much he’d given away, and how thoroughly Zimmerman would go through his notes, now he knew he had been lied to.

It was a very long walk back to his and Garak’s quarters, and when he got there he found them dark, illuminated only by the faint glow of the wormhole through their living-room viewport.

“Garak?” he called, keeping his voice as low as he reasonably could, just in case his husband was already asleep. “Garak?”

No reply. For a moment he almost panicked, but – no, in the faint starlight he could pick out the shape of that Hebitian solar spirit statuette, the embroidered blanket thrown over the back of the sofa. He kicked off his boots and padded through to the bedroom. Garak was there, just a lump under the blankets, not even his head sticking out, and Julian felt an irresistible swell of warmth at the sight of him as he stripped and slid under the covers.

Garak gave a soft, sleepy little hiss and rolled back a little, until he and Julian were back-to-chest and Garak was leeching off Julian’s heat as usual. Julian felt the thicker, ridged and armoured scales of Garak’s back dig in, and winced, shoving gently to urge Garak to roll over. Grumbling sleepily, Garak did so. It had taken him a long time to stop starting awake at the slightest sound, and Julian had woken more than once in the early days of their relationship with a knife at his throat before Garak remembered himself.

It couldn’t all be broken, could it, if Garak was still on some level – even subconsciously – so comfortable around Julian that he could sleep so deeply with Julian there? All the distance, the awkwardness, the secrets…maybe, if they still had this, it wasn’t the end of everything. Not yet.


	5. Chapter 5

In fact, it was very nearly lunchtime the next day when Tekeny managed to find a spare half-hour to visit the infirmary in between calls to widely-scattered contacts, including a few, passed on through Garak, right to the heart of Dominion-occupied Cardassia itself. Julian’s morning had been almost as eventful. Apparently Tarses’ Ferengi flu had just been the first case in an epidemic, as three of Quark’s regular waiters had just come down with it too. To be safe, Julian was going to put out a station-wide recommendation that all Ferengi residents come for an inoculation before it spread any further, but that hadn’t gone out yet, and so he was free to leave the last of his morning’s patients in Jabara’s capable hands and begin the examination.

People always asked if it was difficult, doing this for people he’d come to know and be friendly with, and it had been, at first. On the station, though, there often wasn’t much alternative. He hadn’t expected any awkwardness with Tekeny, but it was there all the same. It felt much odder, to be standing there asking his father, or the man he still thought of as such, about his symptoms and habits and _have you been exposed to any unusual phenomena lately_. Still…Julian had never been quite at ease trusting the people he cared about to the care of any other doctor. Probably that was arrogant of him. Certainly it was short-sighted. He knew all of this, and he’d tried never to actually object to doing it anywhere anyone might hear it, but it bothered him all the same. The closer the person, the worse it became – he would never have trusted anyone else with the business of Garak’s implant, or his withdrawal in the weeks that followed – but…he stared down at the readings on the tricorder, and wished, very much, that he’d been mistaken.

“…you’ve been standing there in silence for fully two minutes,” Tekeny said, frowning. “I…is it bad news?”

Julian swallowed. “…we should talk about this in my office,” he said quietly, letting the doctor’s habit take over. As Tekeny’s son, he could panic. As his doctor, he had to stay calm. And, after all, it wasn’t hopeless yet. But soon- Soon enough it would be. If Tekeny hadn’t come, if Julian’s parents’ arrival hadn’t given him a reason to-

Tekeny nodded. He didn’t seem surprised – had he already known, or suspected, things were worse than he had made them sound?

Once they were through in Julian’s office, Julian turned to him.

“You’re in the early stages of Yarim Fel syndrome,” he said, too much affected himself to soften the impact. “It’s not very advanced yet, but you _knew_ there was something wrong. And you didn’t tell me.”

Tekeny nodded, looking ashen. “I didn’t see that it would make any difference,” he said, “I could receive treatment on Mathenis as easily as here, and then…well, first it was your wedding, and it seemed churlish of me to spoil it, and then you were so…things were so hard for you already…”

“And you think finding out about something like this when it was terminal would make it any _better_?” Julian demanded, his voice cracking a little on the last word. “I- It’s not. Not yet. But Yarim Fel progresses so fast…a few weeks more, and it would be just a matter of how much more time I could eke out for you.”

He kept imagining it, couldn’t quite help it. Alin would probably call him, for the end, so that he could hear his father’s shri-tal, or just so he could be there for the memorial. If he was permitted. If he was not too human even for that.

He drew in a breath. “People have had good results from hexadrin therapy, where the disease was not too far advanced. And there are neuro-regenerative treatments for the damage to your nervous system…”

“I’m sure I’m in excellent hands,” Tekeny said, “There was another matter I wanted to discuss with you.”

“Another- Father, you might be _dying_ , and-”

There was a choky sort of noise from behind him and, very slowly, knowing what he was about to find, Julian turned around.

“…oh,” he said, trying to sound disinterested and failing. “It’s you.”

Richard Bashir looked rather as if he had been hit over the head with a brick. He made another choked spluttering noise – this might be the first time Julian had ever seen him at a loss for words – and then saw Tekeny, and rallied suddenly.

“What did I hear you call that Cardassian, Jules?”

“I-” Julian started automatically, but then remembered where he was. This wasn’t his quarters, or his parents’ home on Earth, or anywhere else Richard could claim to be in charge. This was the infirmary, and that was, unquestionably, Julian’s own. “You can’t come in here,” he said instead. “This is a private medical consultation – who let you in here?”

“Some nurse or other, I had to make up some guff about having an appointment you must’ve forgotten about – is that any way to treat your own dad, Jules?”

Julian drew in a sharp breath. “You _lied_ to one of my nurses,” he said flatly. “And broke in on a private consultation. I’m at _work_ , unless you hadn’t noticed, so whatever it is will have to wait.”

“If you didn’t keep ducking away every time your mother or I tried to talk to you, I wouldn’t have had to,” Richard said, entirely unrepentant. “And none of that’s answering my question, Jules. Who is this, and what did I just hear you call him?”

Julian’s stomach twisted. He could feel both sets of eyes on him, Tekeny and Richard, his father and…his father. He’d thought that was true for two years now, and still on some level wished it was. He’d let himself believe it, even after finding out the truth. And now- What was he supposed to say? What was the right, the expected thing to do?

Or-

Richard clearly wanted him to say something like ‘no-one’. Julian could see the expectation in his face. That Julian would deny, downplay, would fall back into line so long as they were in public, would avoid causing a scene in front of an outsider. It was the way these things had always gone before, when Julian had seemed too attached to a teacher or a neighbour or some other adult who’d been kind to him. He’d been a child then. He wasn’t now.

He took a deep breath. “Breaking in on a private medical consultation is not only rude, it’s illegal. Now, are you going to leave, or am I going to have to call station security to remove you?”

Richard snorted. “You wouldn’t? Your own dad? How’d you think that’d go over when you went to explain it – or hasn’t that big brain of yours got that far yet?”

Julian sighed and tapped his combadge. “Bashir to Security,” he said, carefully not looking at Richard’s face.

“What is it, doctor?” Odo’s voice said from the other end, familiarly grumpy but, Julian thought, maybe a little surprised.

“I’ve had someone break in on a private consult with a patient,” Julian said, and didn’t even have to try very hard to sound put-upon. “They’ve become rather belligerent and are refusing to leave. If you could-”

“I see.”

The line went dead.

Richard was spluttering again – words like ‘ungrateful’ and ‘overreacting’ seemed to feature a lot – but all that seemed very far away just then. He felt oddly light-headed, unreal, as if this was all a dream or something that was happening to someone else and he, Julian, just an observer. But it wasn’t, and he wasn’t, and with some effort he forced himself back into the present.

“Julian,” Tekeny said quietly, “Are you sure-”

Julian nodded, not quite feeling up to speech.

“I see.” Tekeny’s whole demeanour seemed to shift, becoming harder and colder as he turned on Richard. “In which case, I must ask if you are in the habit of intruding upon- Doctor Bashir’s professional responsibilities in this way?”

Richard Bashir was not, for all his faults, a man easily cowed. “It’s not as if he was in surgery, is it? And,” he went on, “Since the boy won’t answer, I’m asking you. What did he just call you?”

Tekeny caught Julian’s eye. Julian rather wished he hadn’t. That Tekeny had either told Richard the truth or that it was none of his affair, rather than leaving the choice in Julian’s hands.

“You heard me call him ‘father’,” Julian said shortly, looking away from the pair of them as he heard Constable Odo’s strangely hollow-sounding footfalls drawing closer. “Constable,” he went on, as Odo appeared in the doorway, “Er- Try not to be too hard on him,” he added, a little belatedly, because after you’d called station security on your own…well, it was a bit much to ask them not to be too rough at this stage, was what he was getting at.

Richard Bashir did not go quietly, Julian could hear the steady stream of invective from his office as Richard was dragged through the infirmary, but inside the office itself it was strangely quiet. Julian breathed in sharply, and glanced down at his knuckles, nearly white where his hand was clamped around the edge of his desk. With an effort of will, he let go of the edge.

“You can’t have known this was Yarim Fel specifically,” he said, “What did you think it was?”

Tekeny frowned. “Julian, are you sure you’re-”

“Fine!” Julian said, a little too quickly. “Both hexadrin and neuro-regeneration are likely to be time-consuming, but treatment really ought to be started as soon as possible – it’s lucky you came, if you’d put it off any longer-”

For a moment, he thought Tekeny was going to push again, and Julian couldn’t- couldn’t think about this now. Surely, the news that his father was- might yet be dying was enough for anyone to deal with for one day? But after one long, tense moment, Tekeny nodded.

“I can extend my stay by a few weeks, at least – the liaison Starfleet assigned has been hinting that the station would be an ideal place for a Cardassian government-in-exile, given how long your Garak has lasted despite having as many enemies at home as I do.” Tekeny grimaced a little at that. “Probably more, given how universally disliked Tain was, and Regnar was only ever known as Tain’s creature. Which would you recommend?”

“The hexadrin is the less invasive method, but it’s less effective in the long term.” This, at least, was a subject Julian knew well enough to be comfortable with it. “I would start with neuro-regenerative treatments, since it hasn’t spread far enough to be terminal. If you would prefer the hexadrin for whatever reason-”

Tekeny gave a tired smile, “No, no, I trust your judgement.”

Julian nodded, and made a note of it. He could feel Tekeny’s eyes on him, questioning. Not pushing, because he had never pushed, not even in the beginning, but Julian could see the question in his eyes nonetheless. _Are you ashamed of me?_ Julian had rarely acknowledged their connection before – reminding his largely-Bajoran staff that he might be a Cardassian spy had never seemed like a good idea, and he could hardly talk to Miles or any of the other senior staff about the fact that his family – the truest family he had – consisted of one exiled Cardassian legate and two former Obsidian Order agents. That would have invited questions about the Bashirs, and why he hadn’t gone looking for them, and any sort of scrutiny there was more than he could afford. It wasn’t- It had never been _shame_ that kept him quiet. Not about that, anyway.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he said, keeping his eyes on the screen on his PADD. “I didn’t expect him to just burst in here – usually he and Mum just wait to ambush me when I leave the infirmary.”

“Ambush you?” Tekeny repeated, raising his brow-ridges with a faintly disapproving look at the door. “Are you the enemy?”

Julian paused. “…no,” he settled on. “Not exactly. They’re just not very happy with me at the moment.”

“I gathered. Is this…that cannot be how he usually treats you.” Tekeny sounded honestly perplexed at that.

Julian shrugged stiffly. “I did tell you that I’m rather a disappointment to him. To Mum as well, but to- to Richard especially.” Now, at least, he could articulate what it was that had been giving him trouble. It felt wrong to call another man any form of ‘Father’, with Tekeny standing right there. It was…logically, it made very little sense. Richard Bashir had been ‘Dad’ for all Julian’s remembered life, but still the title felt wrong for him now. It had felt wrong for longer than Julian had had an alternative, but it hadn’t been _unbearable_ before.

“Then he’s a fool,” Tekeny said sharply. “I may be partial…but then, so should he be.”

“He didn’t much approve of me going into medicine in the first place,” Julian admitted in an undertone. “He seems to have reconciled himself to the idea just in time to be disappointed that I didn’t choose to find a more prestigious appointment – I could have had one, if I’d been willing to play the game.”

And if a better posting had not meant greater risk of exposure – a brilliant young doctor at the edge of Federation space attracted far less than one might on, say, the _Enterprise_ – but that…that was a secret that could be kept, even with the twist of guilt the thought still brought to him. There was plenty in Julian to be ashamed of, even if Tekeny had not seen it yet. Julian was not quite sure what would happen when he did – Cesnil’s flaws might have been forgivable, but for all Tekeny’s insistence that Julian was as much family now as he had been at the wedding, Julian did not know that he would be extended the same understanding.

“You would certainly be more than capable of holding such a post,” Tekeny said. It was not quite a question.

Julian shrugged. “I don’t think he’d be satisfied with anything less than CMO of the Enterprise, if I _had_ to go into the medical track. Command, they might have accepted sooner – more prospect of fame and advancement than in medicine.”

The expression of distaste on Tekeny’s face did not change. “Yes,” he said grimly. “I believe I am familiar with the sentiment.”

Julian glanced at him. He had never asked, and Tekeny never said, why it was that, unlike nearly every other Cardassian parent Julian had met or read about, Tekeny had seemed to have no particular ambitions for or expectations of Cesnil, even when, at the age he had joined the Obsidian Order, it would have been expected for him to already be establishing himself in whatever path it was his family had chosen for him. A lifetime’s habit of not asking personal questions for fear of inviting reciprocity was not so easily overcome as all that, and most of what he knew of Tekeny’s life was information his father had volunteered.  He’d never thought to ask about his…did he have any right to refer to them as his Cardassian grandparents, when they’d never met?

“I do wonder if I went too far the other way, with Cesnil,” Tekeny said after a moment. “He never seemed to know what he wanted to do with himself from one day to the next. The Obsidian Order offered him certainty I could not.”

“You said you wanted him to be an artist.”

It had been the one expectation Tekeny had ever mentioned, in those early days when they’d still been getting used to one another.

“No artist was ever sent to Bajor.” A shadow flickered across Tekeny’s face. “If Cardassia had a few more artists and a few less soldiers, we might not have come to this pass.”

Julian nodded. Of course. It always came back to Cardassia. “Any word about the plan for a government in exile?”

“Some.” Tekeny gave a tired, satisfied smile. “Other exiles, for the most part, as leaving Dominion space is a hazardous enough enterprise as things stand without committing to open sedition.”

“So – the plan is going ahead, then?”

“The Bajorans have grudgingly agreed to allow us premises for an embassy on the station promenade, and one of the disused sectors of the habitat ring, in exchange for certain concessions.” Tekeny grimaced. “All of which depends on being able to establish ourselves as a credible political entity.”

“What have you promised them?” Julian asked.

“Dukat, among others, to be handed over to the Bajorans for trial should he survive the war. The return of the Orbs of the Prophets, those still in Cardassian hands. A century-long nonaggression pact with Bajor. There has been some discussion of military sanctions and financial reparations, once the war is done, but thus far Minister Shakaar has been…more reasonable than I expected.”

“Well, you can’t have expected better,” Julian felt honour-bound to point out. “Not after the Occupation.”

“No. I imagine, after the Occupation, that Cardassian promises mean less to Bajor than the data rods they’re recorded on.”

A pause, and then.

“You’re sure you’re well enough?” Julian asked. “It’ll be…a lot of work, and with these treatments – I’ll do the best I can, but there’s no guarantee…”

“What _must_ be done _can_ be done,” Tekeny replied, “Though it may not be done easily. I can begin the work, at least, even if I don’t live to see it finished.”

“Your prognosis isn’t _bad_ ,” Julian said hastily. His father wasn’t even that old – sixty-two, when modern medicine had stretched the Cardassian lifespan out to average a hundred and fifty years. “With proper treatment, there’s no reason you shouldn’t make a full recovery, but with the stresses involved in leading what sounds like the only opposition to Dominion rule on Cardassia for its own sake-” Because, certainly, most of the rest of the Quadrant wouldn’t care if Cardassia were to fall into a black hole with all its people, so long as they took the Dominion’s forces in the Alpha Quadrant with them.

“It has to be done,” Tekeny said heavily. “And I hardly think the business of gathering support, which will be all we can do for at least the next few months, will be so exhausting as all that, after the Central Command.” He cleared his throat, checked the chronometer. “I should go. I have another call to make. Natima Lang is one of the finest political minds I have ever known. If it proves necessary to find someone else to do this work, I can think of no-one better.”

And with that, Julian had to be satisfied.

No sooner had Tekeny left than a comm came in.

“Doctor Bashir.”

Julian blinked. “Yes, Constable?”

“I need you in security, doctor. A brawl broke out at Quark’s, and three people are badly injured. I have those involved in custody now, but-”

“No, no, I’ll be right there,” Julian said hastily. It had been a slow day in sickbay anyway, and his next appointment wasn’t until that afternoon. “What sort of injuries are they, exactly?”

Mostly broken bones and a couple of bad burns, it turned out, where somebody had been bludgeoned around the head with a carafe of hot raktajino. More-or-less typical barroom fare, really. It was only that handful of cells that were occupied, which was a surprising relief – Julian really didn’t want to have it out with Richard Bashir here. The argument in the infirmary had been bad enough.

“Your mother bailed him out about ten minutes after he arrived here,” Odo said, rather disapprovingly, when he saw Julian looking. “Doctor – I hope we can’t expect more of this sort of behaviour.”

Julian rubbed his eyes. “I…honestly don’t know. We’ve never been close,” he added. “He’s…I remember him more restrained than this, but-”

But then, Julian had been avoiding and antagonising Richard ever since he’d arrived. Had that been enough to drive him to this sort of recklessness?

Odo gave him a faintly suspicious look. “You should know, Doctor, that, regardless of who he’s related to, should there be any more incidents like this one…”

“Believe me, I have no objection to his being prosecuted, if he tries interfering with anyone else,” Julian cut him off. “Is that everything?”

The day did not improve from there.

Miles and Zimmerman would be running further tests on Julian’s holographic counterpart that afternoon, which meant that Julian’s presence in sickbay would be more confusing than anything else for his juniors. That, coupled with the amount of overtime he’d been working since his parents arrived on the station, left him rather at loose ends. It almost made him miss the early days of his posting here, when it had been just him and the techs and the nurses, and so he’d been always either working or on call. As things stood, he had no real excuse for avoiding his parents, and now it was known that he had remained in touch with Tekeny, his obvious preference for his adoptive family over the people that had raised him could seem nothing but suspicious. He avoided them anyway. He didn’t know what good it would do – it wasn’t as if Richard was just going to _forget_ Julian had had him arrested if he stayed away long enough – but just then Julian would have happily consigned the pair of them to the deepest, darkest pit he could throw them in and left them to it.

He’d known, before, that whatever was causing these attacks could not be anything like as trivial as Tekeny had claimed. But all the same…Yarim Fel. Not at the terminal stage yet, but not far off it. It could be treated, yes, but it would be difficult even for someone with more experience of Cardassian diseases, and while Julian’s knowledge of Cardassian biochemistry had improved vastly in the three years since he’d had to run to Enabran Tain for help, he was still far from being a specialist.

He could lose Tekeny, having only had him two years. And with Tekeny, the dream of a Cardassian government-in-exile died too. All those years of work and struggle, every sacrifice, every lie, every hard-fought victory…and it might all end here, on Deep Space Nine, an exile with nothing left to his name breathing his last with his work still left unfinished, his legacy already gone. He rubbed at his eyes and tried to focus on treatment plans. Neuro-regenerative treatments should begin with the respiratory system, where the disease was at its most advanced, exacerbated by the cold, dry air of Mathenis. Hexadrin could follow once the worst of the damage was contained. Already, it was starting to spread to Tekeny’s cartilaginous tissues. Without medical intervention it would only take a few weeks to spread to the digestive and circulatory systems, and once it had…then, it would become a matter of palliative care. Treatment really could not begin soon enough, and with that in mind, Julian started noting down the supplies that needed replicated before he could make a start.

He was five minutes in before he was interrupted.

“Ah, Doctor, there you are.”

A grey hand landed on Julian’s shoulder and squeezed lightly, and Julian looked up to see Garak, wearing a sort of smile that Julian couldn’t quite read. Julian’s heart turned over. Did he know? Garak had had more than adequate time to learn all he could from Adigeon Prime. But if he knew…he stared at Garak’s hand on his shoulder until Garak withdrew it, his smile growing even more strained.

“I must say,” Garak went on, “It’s a surprise to see you out of sickbay. It’s been nearly impossible to pry you out of there these last few weeks.”

Julian wished Garak would stop performing for a moment. It was a futile wish, but- but if this was to be the last he had of his husband, he wanted it to be something real.

“I’ve been busy,” he agreed, looking down at his PADD.

“Julian.” When he looked up, Garak was still staring at him in some concern. “Whatever is the matter?”

What _wasn’t_ the matter, Julian thought wildly. Between Tekeny’s illness, Dukat’s threats, Zimmerman’s project and his blasted parents descending on him at the worst possible time.

“Nothing,” he said, “Just…” he sighed, “I had my first medical consult with my father today. It’s…worse than I was expecting.”

Garak blinked. “I wasn’t aware- Oh. And what, may I ask, is the Legate-”

“Yarim Fel.” Julian’s voice was bleak. “It’s not terminal – not yet, anyway – but…”

Garak’s hand slipped into his, twining their fingers together, and Julian subsided, staring down at their linked hands with an odd, hollow feeling in his chest.

“I have every confidence in your abilities, my dear,” Garak said quietly. “The Legate is in excellent hands.”

Julian shifted uneasily and changed the subject. “He said you were helping with some of the political side of things – how is that going?”

“About as well as can be expected,” Garak said with a sideways smile. “Natima Lang is already on her way here, as is your…cousin…Alin, among others less well known to you.”

Julian nodded, “Do you think it’ll work?”

Garak paused. “To gather support outside Cardassia? No. The Federation supports this effort because it serves their interest so to do and, in exile, there is little the Legate will be able to offer either the Klingons or the Romulans to bring them to Cardassia’s aid. Within Cardassia…well. Ghemor’s name still carries some weight there. It is possible.”

Julian nodded, a little distractedly, and stared down at his PADD. “If he’s well enough,” he said quietly. “I’m not an expert on Yarim Fel, and my experience of treating Cardassians is extremely limited, but without access to a doctor more familiar with Cardassian physiology-”

There might have been doctors on Mathenis, but it did not seem at all likely now that Tekeny would return there, and even if he had, the Mathenite climate might do as much harm as the planet’s doctors would good.

“And, if I may ask, what brought on this uncharacteristic fit of self-doubt?” Garak asked, with a faint, wry smile. “You’ve treated species and diseases you’ve never seen before with no ill-effects.”

“None of them were-” Julian shook his head. “I mean- They were my patients, of course I felt responsible, but-”

But it was different, with family. The people dying of the Quickening had been…tragic, yes, and he’d been devastated by his failure there, but he hadn’t _known_ them, let alone loved them. He’d carry that regret with him for the rest of his life, he knew, but the grief he’d felt then had been…impersonal. Not a loss to himself, but to the universe. He would have no such distance if he failed this time.

“Weren’t you supposed to be having lunch with Ziyal today?” he asked, just for something to say.

“Yes.” Garak’s mouth twisted. “Regrettably, Gul Dukat’s arrival on the station has led to our having to cancel. Probably for the best, as I have no desire to see a pleasant meal ruined by Dukat’s insinuations about my relationship with Ziyal.”

“Your- Garak. Should I be worried?”

Garak gave him an almost pitying look, the same one he wore whenever Julian had, in his opinion, entirely misinterpreted some piece of Cardassian literature or other. “Hardly. Even putting aside the likelihood of either your or Ziyal’s father having me assassinated if I were to attempt it…you should know by now I have no intention of leaving you.”

The words were said lightly, but they made Julian’s heart sink. How much more would Garak hate him, he wondered, when he learned the truth that would make it impossible to keep that promise? Julian did not imagine Garak put any great importance on keeping his word, but when he did lie, he seemed to prefer it to be deliberate. Bad enough to learn he had married a fraud and a monster, but to have shared so much with one, given him so many of Garak’s most closely-guarded secrets…Garak would not forgive that, nor should he.

He forced a smile. “He wouldn’t really have you assassinated. Well, Father wouldn’t, anyway. Gul Dukat might try, but if he could have you murdered any time he liked he’d have done it by now.”

“True,” Garak allowed, “But with the resources of the Dominion behind him…”

Julian could have kissed him then. He wanted to, more than anything. Under other circumstances, he’d have cut Garak off with a kiss without even thinking about it. Somewhere along the line, it had become habit between them. He couldn’t, now. Garak trailed off. He’d clearly been expecting it too. It should’ve made Julian smile to see his affronted face, as if Julian had mortally offended him by missing his cue.

“Do you think that’s likely?”

“A man of intelligence might decide that the middle of a war might not be the time to expend valuable resources on a personal grudge,” Garak said. “Sadly, we are dealing with Dukat.”

Julian was about to reply when a gleam of armour caught his eye over Garak’s shoulder.

“Oh, no. Speak of the devil and he shall appear.”

“I’m sorry-?”

“Garak. I see you listened to my warnings concerning your…entanglement…with Ziyal.”

Julian knew, objectively, that it was impossible for just saying Dukat’s name to have summoned him. Still, the timing was suspicious. So was the fact that he’d bothered to come over at all. Normally, Major Kira got the brunt of his visits, which was…well, it wasn’t _good_ , but it meant Julian had barely had to deal with Gul Dukat personally since the business with the Klingon invasion of Cardassia a year and a half ago.

Garak rolled his eyes. “This deliberate misinterpretation of my friendships is becoming tiresome, Dukat. One wonders if you can think of no other reason for a person to enjoy Ziyal’s company. I realise it may be a somewhat advanced concept, but-”

“I also hear,” Dukat went on pointedly. “That congratulations are in order. Quite what conclusions can be drawn from your having discarded Ziyal in favour of Ghemor’s hanger-on, I’m sure I could not begin to guess-”

“Certainly not if you’ve already decided,” Julian said sourly. “Is there a point to this? Because, if there isn’t-”

“Your loyalty to Ghemor is…surprising…given the circumstances of your first encounter. One might expect the victim of kidnap to feel rather more resentment towards his former captor. And yet, you’ve been his greatest advocate from the moment he applied for sanctuary on Mathenis.”

“…I know,” Julian said, suspicious even if he wasn’t quite sure where this was leading. “I was there.”

“Have you ever wondered if you might be fighting the wrong battle?”

Julian gritted his teeth. “Funnily enough, no.”

“You’re wasting your time, Dukat,” Garak put in. “The good doctor is _remarkably_ loyal, I may say from personal experience.”

Well, yes. Once you’d accepted that your husband had once attempted to commit genocide, even of something like the Great Link, which seemed to blur the lines between being a species and a single entity to the point where it was hard to tell if there had ever been a line at all, it was hard to quibble at any lesser crime. Honestly, Julian wasn’t sure he had accepted it, precisely. If the plan had worked- If the plan had worked, they would both be dead now, but that wasn’t the point. He’d…put it aside, he supposed, as an act of desperation in a moment of weakness, never to be repeated. He didn’t know that Garak had done the same and knew that he would never ask.

“You’ve never made any secret of your opposition towards the Cardassian occupation of Bajor,” Dukat added, apparently apropos of nothing. “A strange political position, considering who you choose to associate with.”

“And one that’s entirely my business, so, if you’ll excuse me-”

“Perhaps,” Dukat interrupted, “Ghemor has not told you everything.” He laid a datapad down on the table with an improbably menacing soft _click_.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Julian snapped.

Dukat gave a wide and oily smile. “That is Ghemor’s official military record. You might find it _fascinating_ reading. And maybe it will give you cause to consider whether your defence of your…mentor…is truly justified.”

“I wouldn’t put money on it,” Julian said grimly, but he took the datapad anyway.

There didn’t seem much point in lingering, after that. Garak had a commission to finish, and Julian had his treatment plans still to work on. He ended up running experimental models in a quiet corner of Dax’s lab, since he was still expected to make himself scarce from sickbay until the hologram project could be moved somewhere else. Julian still wasn’t sure why it was taking place in his infirmary at all, considering the place wasn’t set up for holo-imaging and, in any case, was still a working hospital, but the decision had been made over his head and with any luck the disruption wouldn’t last much longer.

He hadn’t looked at the datapad. What could it tell him? That Tekeny had been part of the Cardassian war machine for most of his life, even while working against it behind the scenes? He had already known that. You did not achieve the rank of Legate, far less one prominent enough in the Central Command to have effective protection from the Obsidian Order, without having first proven you could be trusted, and that- He knew what that must have taken, from what little Garak had let slip of his own training.

He also knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that whatever it was that Dukat had expected to turn Julian aside, it would not equal the worst of Garak’s crimes. And Julian had forgiven those without a second thought. It probably said something terrible about him that he was capable of that. But then…well. Augment. The worst atrocities of the Cardassian wars, and the Occupation before them, were nothing in comparison to what people like him had done on Earth not five hundred years ago. Perhaps this, the ability to put aside terrible acts as if they had never even happened, for no other reason than that he cared for the perpetrators, was the first step on the road to atrocity. Julian didn’t know.

He was just starting to come up with a more detailed plan for initial treatments, to do what he could to head the disease off before it spread any further, and then work on curing what was already there, when the door hissed open and behind him.

He looked around and forced a grin when he saw who it was. “Chief! Zimmerman let you go early, did he?”

“No.” Miles looked terrible, drawn and worried, and the hairs went up on the back of Julian’s neck.

“What’s the matter? Is anyone hurt? Do you need-”

“No- No-one’s-” Miles swallowed. “We. We had your dad in the infirmary looking for you.”

It took a moment for Julian to realise he meant Richard Bashir.

“What did he want?”

“To have a go at you, it sounded like. The things he said…” Miles shook his head. “You never told me he was this bad.”

“You never asked,” Julian retorted, a little testily. “I’m sorry if he caused you any trouble – he burst in on me and- and Legate Ghemor earlier during a consult-”

“Julian.” Miles’ voice was deadly serious. “He called you an augment.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one was originally intended to cover up to the confrontation with the Bashirs. Regrettably, this chapter got away with me. Stand by for the climaxes of both the mystery arc and the Julian's family arc next time.  
> (I would like to apologise to those more interested in Garak's emotional problems with Julian closing off. Those, too, will come out next time. A last night together before certain doom tends to have that kind of effect.)

For a moment Julian couldn’t grasp it, but then it all seemed to hit him in one dizzying rush. One last grand act of spite, because if Richard Bashir couldn’t have what he wanted, he’d destroy it so no-one else could. And what he wanted – what he’d always wanted – was Julian as his double, his echo, the one great achievement that justified Richard’s life. It was why he’d risked all for the augmentations, gambled latinum they didn’t have to afford it, cut Amsha and Julian off from their family in Cairo to be sure they kept the secret, and all of it to make Julian into some- some monument, some proof that Richard’s life had been well lived, because he’d known even then he’d never do it on his own. All parents had expectations of their children, the counsellor at one of his various schools had told him, before he knew. A father trying to live through his son was nothing so very unusual. He had accepted that, to some degree, even as he kept them at arm’s length. Somehow, though, he’d never realised what a heavy burden it was until he had believed Richard Bashir nothing but the invention of an Obsidian Order handler, and that weight of expectation had been gone.

Miles was still talking, and Julian heard enough to piece it together. Richard had gone looking for him. And, he had thought, found him, in the infirmary, apparently alone. Except, of course, they hadn’t been. And what he had found hadn’t been Julian. If it had been him, he could have cut Richard off, told him he was making a scene and that Miles and Zimmerman were in the next room and could overhear anything they said. If it had been him, this never would have been a problem. It at least didn’t seem that Richard had ruined him intentionally now, but this accident was almost worse – if it had been intentional, Julian could have claimed it was just spite and venom, and his word was as good as Richard’s. Better, in fact, given that some of his father’s schemes over the years had crossed the line from ‘risky investment’ into outright con-artistry.

“I can’t believe you set him up like that!” he snapped when Miles finished.

“We set _him_ up?” Miles exclaimed, staring. “That’s all you’ve got to say? Your own father storms into your lab, starts throwing around the worst sort of accusations, calling you every name in the book-”

“If it were just that, you wouldn’t have told me about it,” Julian cut him off.

“I’d want to know why you didn’t say anything earlier! I’ve- I’ve been trying to talk you into making contact with that bastard for the last two years!”

“And now you know why I didn’t,” Julian said distractedly. Didn’t Miles see there was something more important going on here? “If you were this concerned about it, why didn’t you put a stop to it sooner? Or did you just want to sit there and laugh while he made a fool of himself-”

“It was Zimmerman’s idea,” Miles admitted. “Do you think I _wanted_ to hear that? That isn’t…he doesn’t talk to you like that normally, does he?”

“We hadn’t spoken in fourteen years before this, there is no ‘normally’ anymore!” Julian rubbed his eyes. “But…it’s been getting worse, since he found out about Fa- about Legate Ghemor. And none of that is the point!”

He hated the look on Miles’s face. He hadn’t raised the subject of Julian’s augmentations yet, but the look on his face said it all. Sickened. Disturbed. Horrified. He was covering it over well, showing concern, but…but it was only natural. No-one wanted to learn their best friend was the second coming of Khan Noonien Singh. If they were friends, now. Probably Miles would want to cut ties too. It wouldn’t be hard. If this got out, all he’d have to do was…carry on as normal. Julian would be in prison, and then likely some form of institution that was not called a prison, but served much the same function, and Miles would be here. Their friendship would be over anyway. Maybe he’d write, at first, out of pity, but that would taper off sooner or later.

“No,” Miles said. “It isn’t. Look, I’m sorry about this. I wish it had never happened. But it has, and now we’ve got a problem.”

Julian turned away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Julian!” Miles snapped. “Zimmerman is going to file a report saying that Doctor Bashir is unsuitable for computer modelling because of his _suspected genetically enhanced background_. Do you know what's going to happen when that report gets back to Starfleet Medical?”

Of course Julian knew. It was the inevitability that had shaped his entire adult life. It was why he’d wanted to come out here in the first place, why he’d had so many short, passionate, shallow affairs that had never led anywhere and never been meant to. It was why he’d thrown himself into everything, whether it was work or play or the pursuit of knowledge, so entirely. He had always known that there was a time limit. Sooner or later, he’d be caught out, and then he’d spend the rest of his life staring at the same four walls, living the same circumscribed routine. If he was only going to have a few short years of freedom, he’d thought, he might as well make the most of them.

That, too, had changed two years ago. Sisko had once said he’d steadied since then. And Julian knew why. All at once, he’d had a future. One that might stretch years, decades, maybe a century if he took care of himself properly. And, when he had a future, he’d wanted to plan for it, the way he never had before. Somewhere along the line, he’d let himself believe in that, let himself dream about a life, a career, a family that had never been meant for him. And now the dream was over, and the thing that had dreamed it was a man was awake.

“There's going to be a formal investigation,” he said simply. “Which will lead to my eventual dismissal from the service.”

He saw the moment it hit Miles, saw the look on his face. He hadn’t believed it. Not really. Now he knew. Julian waited for the hatred, the disgust, the rage at having been taken in.

“Then…it’s true? You’re-”

“The word you're looking for is ‘unnatural’, meaning ‘not from nature’,” Julian said heavily, not wanting to look Miles in the face as the realisation sank in. “‘Freak’ or ‘monster’ would also be appropriate.”

After that it all seemed to come flooding out, the whole pitiful story of the short life of Jules Bashir. Julian would have expected it to be harder to speak of, but once he started, it came easily. He didn’t even remember most of it – he was so young, and his memories of the time before are so faint, so blurred, so unreliable, next to the crystal-clear perfection of an augmented memory. Amsha was the one who told him most of it, after the row he and Richard had had the day he found out. As if that would make things better. All it had done was make Julian ashamed. More ashamed. Because…he wouldn’t go back, given the choice, and the thought of it terrified him. Jules Bashir could have been happy with the life Amsha had predicted for him. Julian…it wasn’t that he was too good for it. Quite the reverse. But all the things he loved doing, all the things he wanted to do, relied on the augmentations, on what his parents had made of him. That had been the cruellest cut of all.

“You’re not a fraud!” Miles said, almost the moment Julian had finished. “I don't care what enhancements your parents may have had done. Genetic recoding can't give you ambition, or a personality, or compassion or any of the things that make a person truly human.”

Julian could have screamed at him. As if that mattered. Jules might have had the best personality on Earth, might been ambitious and compassionate and all the other things no-one would ever believe an augment could be. It wouldn’t have mattered. Starfleet only took the best, and Jules- Well, Richard Bashir had made it clear enough that even finishing school hadn’t been likely, never mind going on to university afterwards. Everything Julian was had been created by those surgeons on Adigeon Prime. And the longer Miles tried to convince himself that Julian wasn’t a real augment, that it had just been a few minor tweaks to what had already been there, that Jules Bashir hadn’t been erased, treatment by treatment, until all that was left was his name, the worse it would be when he realised the truth.

“Starfleet Medical won't see it that way,” he said, because it was that or screaming. “DNA resequencing for any reason other than repairing serious birth defects is illegal. Any genetically enhanced human being is barred from serving in Starfleet, or practising medicine.”

Or, really, doing anything much at all. The list of professions from which he was excluded had included every career he had ever hoped to have. ‘Doctor’ would have been enough to see him imprisoned on its own. ‘Starfleet doctor’ might, with an unsympathetic judge, qualify as treason. Even beyond that…what work could an augment ever find? No-one would hire one to so much as wait tables, when there were unaugmented humans seeking work.

There had been a custom, in the barbaric times before the end of the eugenics wars, of leaving those who had committed great offences, but could not be formally tried, in a room alone with a bottle of something alcoholic and a pistol with one shot. Julian supposed the bottle was a bit too much to hope for, but the pistol- Starfleet wouldn’t want this getting out. An augment that had gone undetected this long, had successfully infiltrated the service, even if that wasn’t what he’d meant to do at all…there’d be a public panic as soon as the news got out. They’d want this whole thing kept quiet. They wouldn’t execute him – the Federation didn’t do that anymore, hadn’t in centuries – but the quiet suicide of a not-yet-disgraced Starfleet officer…well, it would be a tragedy, of course. All the right words would be said. Garak would still get his widow’s pension, the fledgling Cardassian government-in-exile wouldn’t be dragged into a long and messy court case with only one possible conclusion that would weaken their standing with their new Federation allies.

Julian didn’t want that future. But if it were that or a lifetime of staring at the walls of his cell, first on a Federation penal colony and then in whichever institution they sent him to once he was, technically, a free man…he honestly wasn’t sure he wouldn’t take it.

“I don't there's been a case dealing with any of this in a hundred years. You can't be sure how they'll react!” Miles protested, crossing the room to look Julian in the face.

 “Oh, I _am_ sure. Once the truth comes out, I'll be cashiered from the service. It's that simple.”

He would be lucky if he was only cashiered, but he couldn’t say that to Miles. No-one wanted to hear Julian’s self-pity over all this. Besides, Miles…Miles was still at the stage where the idea would horrify him. He’d want to fight it, and Julian…

He’d done his research, before joining Starfleet. He’d known exactly how illegal what he was doing was. He’d looked at the laws, put in at Starfleet’s inception and tightened after the destruction of Regula I. And Julian – liar, cheat, fraud that he was – was not the man to change Starfleet’s mind on the subject, if it could be changed at all.

“There must be something we can do,” Miles said doggedly. “We can't just give up.”

Julian straightened up a little. “There is something I can do. Resign, before Doctor Zimmerman files his report.”

It wouldn’t spare him the legal consequences of what he was. But it would lower the stakes. He wouldn’t be an infiltrator within Starfleet, the public panic would be less, and he could go without all this being dragged through the news cycle. He couldn’t run. There was no longer anywhere to run to. But he could avoid dragging his family into a scandal, and between Garak’s past, his father’s position and Alin’s political aspirations, that was something none of them could afford.

“Oh, Julian,” Miles said, a low, pained exhale, and Julian couldn’t help but be touched, just a little, for all he knew that it wouldn’t last. Maybe Miles just didn’t want to acknowledge what he’d befriended, maybe this would end the moment he had time to stop and think. But even this much acceptance was more than Julian had ever dared hope for.

“It's over, Miles,” Julian said quietly. “I always knew this would happen. Now it has. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'd like to be alone.”

Except, of course, he couldn’t be.

He needed to tell Garak. And this time, he couldn’t avoid telling him everything. It was almost a relief. After that…he had to talk to his father. Tekeny’s treatment couldn’t wait, and with Julian imprisoned, finding another doctor to continue his work was imperative. Julian could name maybe three of his own juniors he would trust with Tekeny’s life, and Tekeny might know others from the refugee community on Mathenis, who might know more about treating Cardassian diseases than Julian. And- And he needed to know the truth too. They both deserved that much.

The tailor’s shop was all but empty when Julian got there, Garak himself fussing over a display of the fashionable loose wraparound shirts that Garak himself admitted he despised. It was difficult not to smile at the look on his face while handling the things. Julian’s husband was many things, few of them really creditable, but ‘ridiculous’ was not one that many people would find it safe to observe. The odd, possessive thrill of the thought still hadn’t worn off. His husband. Garak was his _husband_. Well, he wouldn’t be for very much longer. Even if he had wanted to stay shackled to a monster and a prisoner and a fraud…he’d been deceived from the start, when Julian had all along been the one pressing for more honesty than Garak had wanted to give.

He’d stayed in the doorway too long, he realised a moment too late, as Garak straightened up and came over, smiling.

“Doctor! I wasn’t expecting you. I hadn’t thought you’d be able to tear yourself away from the Legate’s…condition…until you were certain of a cure.”

“No,” Julian admitted, and then, because he was afraid he would lose his nerve if he didn’t say it now. “There’s something I need to talk to you about. In private.”

Garak’s smile faded a little, but he reached over to press the button behind the counter anyway. The ‘open’ sign outside flickered off, and the shutters began to come down behind Julian.

“I trust this is important,” Garak said, a little peevishly.

Julian nodded, swallowed, stared down at his hands, unable to find where to start. “Doctor?” Garak prodded, and then, quieter, “Julian?”

Julian forced himself to look up, to meet Garak’s eyes, though he couldn’t hold them for long, despite all Richard Bashir’s attempts to get Julian to look people in the eyes when he spoke to them. Eventually, Julian had started training himself to look people in the nose instead, which most people couldn’t tell from the real thing.

He shook the thought away. There’d be time enough to think about all that later. All the time in the world.

“I’m going to be leaving the station,” he said at last. “Probably permanently.”

Garak blinked. “…you’ve been reassigned? Where?”

“I haven’t been reassigned,” Julian corrected. “I’m- I’m going to be cashiered from the service. Probably imprisoned, too. There’s…” he cut himself off. It was so much harder to tell Garak than it had been to tell Miles. Perhaps because he had demanded so much more trust from Garak, and never for a moment thought to return it. “My- Richard was in the infirmary earlier. Talking to my holographic doppelganger. He…Doctor Zimmerman overheard him…”

“Ah.” Garak’s eyes were very sharp now. “May I assume this has something to do with the latinum your father owed to the Orion Syndicate on that planet?”

Julian stared.

“…what?”

“You told me to investigate Adigeon Prime,” Garak reminded him. “I did. There was not very much there to find, but what there was was…suggestive. Exactly what did the Orions have you doing to pay that debt off?”

Julian stared some more, but saw that Garak had no answers. “I…didn’t know about that. I- He never said where the money for it had come from. I suppose I should’ve asked – it wasn’t as if he was going to get that sort of latinum from the Federation-”

“The money for what, doctor?”

Julian swallowed. “Genetic augmentation,” he said quietly. “Accelerated critical neural pathway formation. There’s…there’s something you need to know about me.”

And then, Julian told him everything. What little he remembered of Jules’ life, the treatments, and how much they had hurt. Moving to London and being told that he couldn’t talk to Giddu and Tēta Khalifa back in Cairo anymore. The thrill of finding himself suddenly the cleverest pupil in every class, the pressure at once to excel and to blend in, and never knowing which was needed in any given situation until he was in trouble for having made the wrong choice. Learning the truth, the fight that had followed, the three miserable years until he could leave, and how he’d run as far as he could possibly go and never looked back until, all at once, he’d been confronted with the idea that the past he was running from might not even be his at all. Garak listened to it all, impassive, until the flood of words ran dry.

“Doctor Zimmerman knows of this?” Garak asked, once Julian was done.

“Yes. And of course he’ll tell Starfleet Medical.” Julian looked away. “Any genetically enhanced person is barred from serving in Starfleet, holding public office, practicing medicine…once the truth comes out, I will be court-martialled, dismissed from the service and likely imprisoned. Probably for the rest of my life, one way or another.”

“Well,” Garak said. “We can’t let that happen.”

Julian looked up. “…what?”

“I suppose you would object to having Doctor Zimmerman eliminated?” Garak went on, as if they were talking about the weather.

“Yes, I- Garak, what are you talking about?”

Garak sighed superciliously, the same way he did whenever Julian was being, in his opinion, unusually thick-headed. “So far as you have said, my dear, Doctor Zimmerman holds information that will lead to your removal from Starfleet at best, and at worst a life sentence in a Federation penal colony. While eliminating Zimmerman before he makes his report would be by far the most certain way of preventing this, your moral scruples prevent you from accepting such a course. In which case, we must either neutralise his information or-”

“What- Garak, there _is_ no getting out of this. I always knew I’d be caught one day. Now I have been.” Julian spread his hands in front of him. “I came here to tell you what was going to happen, so that you had a chance to…to distance yourself, before any of this affects you. I- I won’t make trouble about a divorce, if you’re worried about-”

Garak looked, for a moment, as if he’d been struck. Then, his expression shifted. “Do you intend to divorce me?”

“Of course not!” Julian said impatiently, “But you can’t want-”

“Can I not, doctor?” Garak’s eyes narrowed. “You were quite a regular visitor to my cell for six months, as I recall, and then we weren’t even married. Am I to be denied the right to do the same for you?”

“That was different,” Julian said impatiently.

“Yes. I had actually committed a crime, where you appear to be under threat of a far longer imprisonment for having been the victim of one.”

“Or the beneficiary,” Julian retorted. Whether he had wanted it or not, that was what the courts would call it. His parents had paid a small fortune – apparently borrowed from the Orion Syndicate, just in case the whole thing hadn’t been illegal enough already – to correct Jules’ defects, because a son who was less than perfect did not, so far as Richard Bashir was concerned, deserve to exist at all. “Garak, I’m an _augment_.”

It was the first time he had used the word to describe himself outside his own head, and it startled him with the heavy finality of it.

Garak’s mouth twisted. “I…suppose you should be commended. If Enabran Tain himself could not learn of this-”

“He knew,” Julian admitted. “He said so. In the prison camp. It was him who passed the information back to the Obsidian Order, so they could use it to convince me I was Cesnil Ghemor.” His mouth twitched. “Why did you think I was so ready to believe Entek?”

“I never imagined it was Entek that convinced you.”

Garak would not look at him. Julian supposed he wasn’t surprised.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I- I can’t even say I never meant to lie to you. When we started this, I thought…I hoped…that it was all a lie. That I really did used to be Cesnil Ghemor and so you already knew everything you needed to. But even then, I wasn’t certain. I should have told you there was a chance-”

“You should have told a former operative of the Obsidian Order who was quite willing to betray you and everyone else on this station not three weeks after we began our relationship when Tain offered me a place at his side again,” Garak said, sounding almost confused. “Doctor, I realise self-protection is far from your first priority, but were you not just days ago complaining to me that I never tell you anything about my past and yet felt entitled to yours?”

“The hypocrisy does not escape me, thank you.” Julian rubbed his eyes. “I should have told you,” he admitted.

“You _are_ telling me. I simply don’t know whether to be pleased or disappointed that I had not discovered the fact on my own before this.”

Julian shrugged. “I expect you weren’t looking. People don’t, generally. That and the lack of paperwork to show for it are the only reasons I’ve lasted this long. I was allegedly in hospital on Adigeon V because I was taken ill while on holiday, when I looked up the records. That my father ‘happened to lose a bundle gambling’ to a doctor at the same hospital isn’t immediately suspicious unless you already know what you’re looking for.” He shrugged. “Starfleet does now. Or if they don’t, they will soon.” He looked away. This was the hardest part. “None of which changes that I should have told you because you deserved to know, not because I’ve been forced into it. And if you want to end things because of it, I…well, you don’t need my understanding, but I _do_ understand. And I won’t make trouble over it. You deserved…so much better.”

“ _I_ deserve,” Garak repeated, looking distinctly dubious. “Doctor, you will recall that it was less than a year ago I was sentenced to six months in prison for attempted genocide?”

As if Julian could forget. Those six months had been agonising, as he’d been unable to explain to anyone, even himself, why he kept visiting after Garak had nearly killed an entire species and, in case that weren’t enough, Julian himself and his colleagues into the bargain.

“I remember. It’s not the same thing. That was- I don’t even know if you regret it, but that was something you did. It wasn’t…It was a terrible thing to do, and I’ll never approve of your having done it, but I know why you did, and I know you were desperate. It’s not the same thing as having hidden that I’m a- that I’m the monster people scare their children with for five years!”

“ _Do_ people scare their children with you?” Garak asked, entirely missing the point.

Julian threw up his hands. “Not-! It was a rhetorical device, and stop changing the subject! Can you honestly tell me you want to spend the rest of your life shackled to a _freak_?”

“I do not anticipate I will be,” Garak said levelly, and Julian’s heart- It did not sink, as such. It felt more like someone had gripped his heart in a giant hand and was squeezing all the blood from it. Maybe it had been foolish, to hold onto hope. He hadn’t even known he was doing it, but hearing it spelled out so bluntly.

“I- I see,” he said, already pulling away. “I- I should go-”

“Julian!” Garak said, more insistently, and one scaly hand closed around Julian’s wrist. “Stay. I have no intention of ending our relationship. If you wish it to end, you will have to take that step yourself.”

“Haven’t you listened to a word I’ve been saying?” Julian demanded. “Garak, I don’t know how many ways I can say this, but you didn’t volunteer to marry Khan Noonien Singh!”

“And,” Garak cut him off. “I didn’t. I married _you_. And, as you might recall, on Cardassia, we take these things seriously. So, I must return to my original enquiries: how would you prefer to see this situation neutralised?”

All the fight drained out of Julian at that. “…it’s too late for that,” he said quietly. “He’s probably already sent his report. Something like this – it’s too urgent for him to let it rest.”

“Life imprisonment,” Garak repeated, sounding almost bewildered. “And your father? The human one? The man who arranged for all of this?”

Julian shrugged. “Maybe five years,” he said quietly. “It’s not…not common, but he isn’t- It’s not the same thing.”

“I will say not! You are to be imprisoned for the rest of your life for a crime of which you were, if anything, the victim, and the perpetrator is to be allowed to walk free after a trifling sentence, less than one might receive on Cardassia for making a politically inappropriate joke in mixed company! So much for the impartial justice of the Federation!”

Garak’s voice was biting. He was _angry_ , Julian realised, with an odd sort of shock of realisation. Perhaps as angry as Julian had ever seen him. All of it for Julian, who- who was, always, dangerous. It wasn’t his fault, but he _was_ dangerous, he couldn’t help it, any more than a gun or a bomb or a tiger could help it. Of course the Federation wanted to know where he was, of course they didn’t want to risk another Khan, more Eugenics Wars, another Regula I.

He tried to explain. “Garak, it’s not- Of course they’re afraid, augments _are_ dangerous. We nearly destroyed all life on Earth once before, no-one wants to risk that happening again-”

“Yes. _Clearly_ , one doctor on an out-of-the-way space station is a threat to all life as they know it. Julian, this is _absurd_!”

“It’s not just about me, there’s a larger principle at stake here. You have to understand-”

“What I _understand_ , doctor, is that the Federation, which has the _nerve_ to mouth platitudes of tolerance at the rest of the galaxy-”

“Can you go _five minutes_ without turning this into another point to score about Cardassian superiority?” Julian demanded. “You’re far from tolerant as a society, you know-”

Garak sniffed. “I never claimed we were. Humans are simply more sanctimonious about it than most. It would be rather more bearable if they at least lived up to their own expectations of others, and yet, at every turn, I find more proof that they do not.”

Julian looked away again, not wanting to get dragged into another argument, and felt Garak’s arms slide around him from behind.

“They will not take you,” Garak murmured into his hair. “Not if I can prevent it.”

“And if you can’t?”

Garak was still for a moment, and then Julian felt him shrug. “It would hardly be the first time I have had to free someone from Federation custody. Would you believe, my dear, that I was once involved in a plan to liberate Cardassian prisoners of war from the penal colony on Garodon V?”

Despite everything, Julian couldn’t help but smile. “Not for a moment, but do go on.”

Tekeny’s response took Julian even more by surprise, if only because he did not really react at all, once his meetings for the day were over and he’d returned to his guest quarters to find Julian already waiting by the door.

“You don’t need to fuss, you know,” he said mildly. “Dukat and his Dominion…associate…haven’t yet finished exhausting the legal options for my removal. Granted, I believe the Bajorans are refusing them on general principle of refusing any Cardassian anything he asks for, but thus far, things seem to have gone smoothly.” He took another look at Julian’s face. “Julian? Are you-?”

“I’m-” Julian bit it off, “I’m not fine, but there’s something I need to tell you. About…about me. And why you’re…you’re probably going to need to find another doctor. I can make up a list of recommendations, but by tomorrow I won’t be licensed to practice medicine in the Federation anymore.”

Tekeny stared. “Won’t be- And why not, might I ask? You’re entirely capable-”

“Rather too capable for Starfleet Medical’s liking,” Julian said, with a hollow sort of laugh. “I- This is going to take some explaining. I- Did Entek ever mention the name ‘Adigeon Prime’ to you-”

“Once, in passing. This is about your genetic augmentations?”

If Julian had been holding anything, he would have dropped it. “I- What? You- You know?”

“Alin told me,” Tekeny admitted, looking for a moment faintly sheepish. “She was as taken in as I was by the deception about your identity, at least at first, but had rather more access to Obsidian Order files. It was supposed to be a failsafe, I believe. A means of ensuring you would not show greater ability than an ordinary human was supposed to possess.”

“Entek told me that story as well,” Julian admitted. “But it’s- It’s real. I really am…” His chest felt suddenly tight, and he stared down at his boots.

“I had gathered as much, yes, but- Julian, what’s happened?”

“My- Richard let it slip. To Zimmerman. Not- Not on purpose, I don’t think, but it doesn’t matter now. The point is- I’m going to have to resign from the service, if I don’t want this dragged through a court martial, and then my license is going to be taken away, and I’m probably going to face trial for fraud, if I’m not just thrown in the nearest institution on medical grounds as a danger to myself and others.”

“But you were only a child,” Tekeny said in a low voice, sounding almost confused. “They can’t possibly blame you for it.”

Julian shrugged. “It doesn’t change what I am. I could’ve…”

What _could_ he have done? Every career he’d ever wanted – tennis, medicine, Starfleet – was barred to augments. Even if he’d gone into…into tailoring, say, even putting aside what Garak assured him was appalling taste and his own lack of any skill at or interest in the trade…his life would have been over the moment this came out. He might not have faced legal consequences, but he’d never have worked again. He tried to imagine other pasts, other things he could have done, but every single one of them led, if not exactly here, then somewhere similar.

He took a breath. “I’m going to resign, first thing in the morning. With any luck that’ll keep this from being dragged through the courts any more publicly than it has to be. The Federation was never made aware of our exact relationship, so the Cardassian government-in-exile here should be able to stay out of the worst of the trouble-”

“Julian, the last thing on my mind right now is avoiding political consequences. Is there any way to reduce the sentence? You are, after all, being penalised for something that was hardly under your control. Even if you can’t keep your position, surely they’ll see imprisonment is-”

“If it isn’t a penal colony, it’ll be a mental institution,” Julian said dully. “I’m…augments are considered far too dangerous to be allowed to wander around freely. I might get it into my head to overthrow the Federation and institute a tyranny of the genetically enhanced, and then where would we be?”

Tekeny looked frankly bewildered at that. It wasn’t a state Julian often saw him in, and he couldn’t say he liked it. “…a very different universe from this one, clearly. Do they- What do you imagine will lead them to conclude you intend such a thing?”

“Well…genetic augmentation,” Julian repeated. Honestly, he knew his father was an intelligent man, it shouldn’t be this hard to grasp. “After Khan Noonien Singh, no-one wants to risk it, and he was considered the best…well, the least monstrous, at any rate…of the old genetically-enhanced tyrants of the Eugenics Wars.”

Khan’s rampage had come at the best – or, Julian supposed, the worst, from his perspective – time. Public opinion had started to swing towards leniency, the Eugenics Wars were even beginning to be considered…almost romantic, in a brutal sort of way. There had been whispers on relaxing the penalties for having been genetically enhanced. All those whispers had died after Khan came back and reminded the human race of why augments had been the monsters parents warned their children about, once upon a time.

“…this hardly seems to have anything to do with you,” Tekeny said, his frown deepening. “And there are any number of Federation species with greater than human abilities of one form or another.”

Julian sighed. “It’s…not as irrational as it seems when you put it like that. Augments are always…changed, somehow. Superior abilities leading to superior ambition, is the usual way of putting it. I’m…very lucky, really, that it didn’t have unexpected side-effects in my case, but that just makes me more of a threat. I’m capable of long-term planning and blending into society, or I was, before all this came out. And I don’t have most of the emotional problems that tend to lead to other augments being caught out comparatively early on. Either we need to be confined for our own safety, because we’re not capable of handling ourselves in the wider world, or we’re too dangerous to be allowed out. There’s really no winning, with something like this.”

Tekeny did not look especially convinced by this line of argument. It was- Julian didn’t know what it was. Maddening, was the closest he could manage, because- Because- Because, if it wasn’t true, if he bore no ancestral responsibility for Khan or the Eugenics Wars or anything else…then, he would be imprisoned, unfairly, for the rest of his life, and there was nothing at all he could do about it. Because, so long as it was his own fault really, his own mistake, his own responsibility …then, at least, he had always had some control over what would happen, even now all control over his own life was being, irrevocably, stripped away. The thought hit him like that, all at once like being run down by an old Terran locomotive, leaving him breathless.

“You could request political sanctuary on Bajor?” Tekeny hazarded. “You have friends in the Bajoran militia, you’ve been trusted with the life of the Kai’s aide-”

“Too many links to Cardassia,” Julian said, on autopilot. “They might have taken me alone, but married to Garak- What is it?”

A startled look of realisation had spread across Tekeny’s face.

“You _do_ have ties to Cardassia,” he said, quietly and earnestly. “Not just on the assumption that you were Cesnil. You are married to a Cardassian citizen – even an exile. Indeed, since this whole venture is a government-in-exile, an argument can be made that you have the right to claim provisional citizenship.”

Julian stared. “I- Is that allowed? I mean- I can’t possibly let you do that, the Federation is already dubious enough about this government-in-exile idea as things are-”

“They would jeopardise the only legitimate opposition to Dominion rule on Cardassia over one genetically-enhanced human?”

“Yes,” Julian said, and there was real bitterness in his voice now, despite all his attempts to hold it back. “Yes, they would. You really have no idea how afraid of us they are, do you?”

He couldn’t read the expression on Tekeny’s face. “I…believe I’m beginning to understand. But as for ‘letting me’…Julian, if this is what it takes to keep you free when you’ve done nothing wrong-”

“I can’t ask you to do that!” Julian said, appalled. “And I wouldn’t if I could! This is Cardassia’s future, I can’t ask you to endanger that.”

“You’re my _son_ ,” Tekeny said impatiently. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”

Two years, and Julian had never quite got used to that…that automatic, careless assumption that of course Tekeny would endanger everything he’d ever worked for just for Julian’s sake. He’d done it once already. Julian didn’t think he could stand the guilt if he forced his father to do it again.

“I know,” he said. And he did, which was stranger. Tekeny had proven that before they’d known each other a week. “But if it comes to it…the cause has to come first. I’m one man, you can’t put me ahead of Cardassia.”

Tekeny smiled, but it was an awful, pained expression. “You forget, I’ve heard that reasoning before. Last time I listened to that argument, I lost almost everyone I cared for. Cesnil…Kaleen…” He shook his head. “I learn slowly, I will admit. But I _do_ learn. We can, at least, make the attempt. If it fails…” he shook his head. “Bajor is still an option. But I will not resign myself to losing you again unless I have no other choice.”

From Richard Bashir, that would have brought Julian’s hackles up. Yet another attempt to weasel his way out of a problem he had caused, the old pattern that went back longer than Julian had even been alive. From Tekeny Ghemor…probably it ought to have offended him too. Thirty-two was, after all, far too old to expect one’s parents to rush in to the rescue. But that was- The thing was, helping him would not be a bludgeon, from Tekeny. It would not be a lever with which to force Julian back into his parents’ orbit, as it would be from Amsha and Richard. He did not even believe Tekeny would consider it particularly exceptional, as in two years he had never said a word to Julian’s face blaming him for the circumstances of their flight from Cardassia. Whether he had said anything to Natima or Alin or any of his remaining friends from the old days, Julian did not know and did not care to know. Even if it came to it, in the end, that Julian was going to spend the rest of his life behind bars…he had people in his corner now – or rather, by some absurd twist of fate, it turned out he’d had them all along – and that was almost worth discovery, just to learn that much.

Julian nodded, forcing down the treacherous voice in the back of his mind that was reminding him of just how selfish it was of him to expect support and even faithfulness from either his father or his husband, when the odds were so good that they would never see each other again, that he would be binding Garak for the rest of his life to a prisoner on some far-distant world and forcing Tekeny once again to endure the loss of a child, all for his own peace of mind. It was, surely, kinder to make a clean break of it, here and now, but Julian didn’t have the strength to push them away.

“We can try,” he said. “You never know. It’s been a hundred years since there was a case like this-”

And in that case, as he recalled, the offending officer had suffered a mysterious ‘accident’ shortly before his twenty-year prison sentence was up, although he had been found out only a few weeks after Regula I, emotion had been running high. There was no reason to fear a similar fate for Julian.

Even in his own head, that sounded like a lie.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, I've been staring at it for months and I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get any better than this. Read at your own risk.

Of course, Julian’s biological parents needed to be informed, if only because if Julian didn’t do it, the first they’d know of the secret getting out would be when the authorities arrived at the door of their guest quarters here on the station, and however much Julian might resent them, however little he wanted to claim even the vaguest and most distant connection with Richard and Amsha Bashir, they still deserved better than that. Julian had expected it to be harder, somehow, facing them here at the end of his career and, quite possibly, his life as a free man. But- But Garak was there, and so was Tekeny. They who knew him, all of him, had seen the twisted miserable core of him, and had not turned aside.

The door had no sooner slid shut behind them than Richard rounded on Julian.

“About time you explained yourself, Jules! What the hell were you playing at earlier? Did you think playing dumb was going to make us forget how you’ve treated us? We’ve a right to an explanation – and what’s that Cardassian doing here?”

“Which one?” Garak asked, affecting that same politely puzzled expression he’d worn for so much of their dinner together, the first night the Bashirs had been on the station.

“Don’t you play games with me!” Richard snapped, jerking his chin in Tekeny’s direction without looking away from Julian. “ _That_ one, the one you were all friendly with earlier. Who is he? And why’d you call him-”

“I haven’t seen you since you burst into the infirmary at lunchtime,” Julian said shortly, straightening a little. “That wasn’t me in the infirmary this afternoon.”

Richard spluttered. “Wasn’t- Well, who was it, then?”

“That would be the prototype LMH,” Julian said wearily. “The one Doctor Zimmerman and Chief O’Brien were supposed to be testing this afternoon. They heard everything. It’s over.”

A wiser or less confident man might have crumpled at that. Amsha certainly did. Richard…well, he had the grace to look shaken, at least. This was not the argument he had come prepared for.

“…they know, do they?” he said, sounding suddenly much less sure of himself.

Julian nodded. He couldn’t help but feel- Well, of course he wasn’t happy about it, but after all the fuss Richard had made over Garak knowing the truth, it was perversely satisfying to know that he himself had been the one to give it away, if the secret had to get out at all.

If Richard had been daunted for a moment, it did not last long.

“And because of that you’ve…what, decided to just up and tell everybody?” he demanded, gesturing at Garak and Tekeny. “Honestly, Jules, anyone’d think you _wanted_ this to get out, the way you’ve gone around blabbing to all and bleeding sundry!”

Julian heard Tekeny clear his throat. “I cannot help but notice, however,” he said, in a voice that meant danger, “That it was not Julian who brought us to this pass.”

It was a little embarrassing, how reassuring that tone was. It was the same one Tekeny had used on Entek, when Julian had been close to breaking under interrogation, that had forced a trained Obsidian Order agent to back down in the face of it. A reminder that, for all his soft-spoken kindness in private life, Tekeny Ghemor had been an officer of the Cardassian Guard for more than forty years, and a commander for more than half that period.

Richard Bashir had never been a coward and had made a lifetime’s habit of talking back to people he probably shouldn’t – it was the one quality of his that Julian would admit to having inherited – but even he could not ignore that here was a man it would be very difficult to bully.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” he said, in a tone that threatened rudeness with every syllable. “But this is a family matter. I don’t know what Jules thought he was doing bringing _you_ into it, but whatever he meant by it-”

“ _Julian_ ,” Tekeny said coldly, with a none-too-subtle emphasis on the name. “Has the right to involve whoever he chooses in his own affairs. I am here at his invitation. As are you.”

“Besides,” Julian cut in. “Legate Ghemor _is_ family. At least as much as you are.” More, to Julian’s mind, but even now, he didn’t quite dare say so, not when even what Richard had said already, which was quite tame by the standards of Bashir family arguments, already had Julian seething with shame at having it witnessed, even by the two people he loved most in the world.

Richard’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, I heard that,” he said, in a tone that was obviously meant to be offensive. “What, humans not good enough for you anymore, you ungrateful little shit? I heard what you called him earlier. I suppose he’s…what, your father-in-law? Couldn’t wait to suck up, could you. If I’d acted like that with your grandparents-”

The expressions on Garak and Tekeny’s faces were such that, had the situation been any less serious, Julian might have laughed.

“Quite the reverse, in fact,” Garak said, recovering himself. “The Legate and I have no connection except through Julian.”

“For once, we are in agreement,” Tekeny put in, looking faintly alarmed at the prospect. Garak as a son-in-law was, Julian knew, a step too close for Tekeny, even if he hadn’t said a word about it since he and Julian had argued about Garak after his actions at the Founders’ Planet. “And,” he added, icily correct in every syllable, “This is the second time I have heard you use that word, ‘ungrateful’. If this is the way you usually speak to your only child, I wonder what it is you expect him to be grateful for.”

Julian could _see_ Tekeny bristling beside him and felt at once ashamed and strangely comforted at the sight.

Richard’s eyes narrowed. “So he hasn’t told you everything?” he said. “Did you think he got himself fixed, the way he goes on about it?”

“Richard, _please_ ,” Amsha hissed, tugging uselessly at her husband’s arm.

“No, Amsha, let’s hear it,” Richard retorted, “I have to lie to three nurses to talk to my own son, and when I get there I find him talking to this Cardassian and calling him ‘Father’. Want to explain that? You don’t get to do that, Jules, you don’t just get to _replace_ your family because you don’t like the one you got-”

“Why not?” Julian snapped back. “You did, didn’t you?”

There was a shocked, breathless silence.

 Julian waited for someone to fill it, decided no-one was going to, and went on. “I suppose that’s what the outburst in the infirmary was about, too? Well, you replaced your son twenty-five years ago, and you’ve got no room to complain about it finally happening to you.”

It wasn’t anything like the same thing really, he knew that much. Richard Bashir would be quite unchanged for the loss of the son he hadn’t spoken to in fourteen years before this unexpected, unwanted reunion. Nothing fundamental in Amsha Bashir would die because Julian had chosen to cut off ties in favour of a family who cared for the Julian that existed, here and now, rather than the one they had hoped to mould him into. And if there was something that whispered in the back of his mind that said that neither Garak nor Tekeny would have loved Jules, had they known him…even if they would not, and none of them would ever know, it was still more than Richard and Amsha Bashir had ever been willing to give.

“You’re so _smart_ ,” Richard said, contempt in every syllable. “You know so much that you can stand there and judge us. But you're still not smart enough to see that we saved you from a lifetime of remedial education and underachievement!”

Something in that tone made Julian _wither_ , somehow, even with Garak and Tekeny at his back. It dragged him back across years and light-years to a thousand childhood arguments when his intelligence had been only a stick to beat him with – improved, but not improved enough for him to see what was, to Richard, so blindingly obvious it required no explanation.

“You don’t know that!” he protested, but even to his own ears it sounded weak. “You didn’t give me a chance-”

“You were falling behind.”

“I was six years old,” Julian said, and it was as if he was hearing his own voice from far, far away. “You declared me a failure in the first grade.”

Tears were stinging at his eyes now, and he blinked them away, furious with himself. Why couldn’t he keep it together for the space of one argument with them? He was being irrational again, and that had never won him any arguments.

Richard was rolling his eyes again. “You don’t understand, Jules,” he said, his voice rising slowly until it was nearly a shout. “You never _did_!”

“No, _you_ don’t understand!” Julian snarled back, hating the childishness of it, heedless of anyone else in the room but him and the man who had, for most of Julian’s life, called himself his father. “I stopped calling myself ‘Jules’ when I was fifteen and found out what you’d done to me. I’m Julian!”

“What difference does that make?”

“Enough to be worth respecting,” Garak said, and when Julian looked around he was on his feet, and the look he was giving Richard was enough to make Julian quite concerned for Richard’s life expectancy.

Julian drew in a breath, forced himself to at least the appearance of calm. He couldn’t do it. He was still shaking. Seventeen years, _seventeen years_ and they still weren’t done with this argument. Maybe they never would be. Maybe they would never understand.

“It makes every difference,” he said, struggling to keep his voice under control. Garak had given him an opportunity, at least. They wouldn’t listen if he shouted, but he’d never been able to do anything else before. There had never been anything to jolt him out of himself, so that he felt less besieged, less hemmed in on every side, so that everything came out in one long rant that might feel satisfying in the moment but was so easily undercut the moment he paused for breath. “Because _I’m_ different. Can’t you see that?” His voice was rising again now, even that moment of calm impossible to sustain for long in the face of that awful, staggering obtuseness that, no matter how well he tried to explain it, would never even try to understand. “Jules Bashir died in that hospital because you couldn't live with the shame of having a son who didn't measure up!”

“That’s not true!” Amsha broke in, releasing her grip on Richard’s sleeve and looking stricken, her hands wringing in front of her like an actress in a bad play. “We were never ashamed of you! Never-”

Julian wanted to scream at her, but- But screaming at Amsha Bashir had never ended well. She caved too easily, would listen and wait you out and then, when you were breathless with tears and too tired to scream any longer, would repeat the same old platitudes as if she hadn’t heard a word. Maybe, Julian had always thought when he was younger, maybe if Richard wasn’t there, things could have been better between them. But so long as he was, Amsha would back his every decision to the hilt, even when his half-baked ideas had her fretting every moment about latinum owed or half-frozen in the snows of Invernia II when the job as a groundskeeper at the embassy there fell through and Richard hadn’t given them time to apply for new, better housing elsewhere, even when he was barking at her that it was her fault the latest job had failed, and if maybe she’d been more supportive Richard might not have been let go.

Still, he couldn’t help snapping out:

“I’m sorry, Mother, but the truth is-”

“You don’t know,” Amsha cut him off, and that was, in itself, rare enough to cut Julian’s objections off at the roof. “You’ve never had a child. You don't know what it's like to watch your son. To watch him fall a little further behind every day. You know he's trying, but something's holding him back. You don't know what it's like to stay up every night worrying that maybe it's your fault. Maybe you did something wrong during the pregnancy, maybe you weren't careful enough, or maybe there's something wrong with you. Maybe you passed on a genetic defect without even knowing it…”

“Amsha,” Richard said quietly, tugging at her, the way she always tugged at him.

Julian just stood there, stock-still. The words wormed their way in. And- It was familiar, was the worst of it. Whose fault it was that he was the way he was hadn’t been an uncommon thing to overhear even after he was augmented, when he was still doing the wrong things, saying the wrong things, didn’t understand the hundreds of little social cues and signals other people seemed to grasp so easily. Sometimes Amsha had been blamed. Sometimes it was Julian himself – that he wasn’t trying hard enough, that the inbuilt arrogance of all augments made him think that he was better than learn how to put people at ease. No-one had ever so much as voiced the suggestion that his struggles might be genuine. The words twisted in his mind, coiling around certainties that had always been there, unexamined but always present. Because of course, of course, he had always known he was _somebody’s_ fault. It was only the identity of that person who had surprised him.

“No, this is important,” Amsha said, squeezing Richard’s hands, and that, too, was unusual. “You can condemn us for what we did.” Everything in her voice made it clear how cruel a choice she thought that would be for him to make. “You can say it's illegal or immoral or whatever you want to say…” And every syllable was a refutation of the idea that it had been anything of the kind. “But you have to understand,” she finished, softer now, but still quite unrepentant. “That we didn’t do it because we were ashamed, but because you were our son, and we loved you.”

Julian could taste salt. It was- That wasn’t the- Was it? Was- Was that all it was supposed to take to make things better? His hands were shaking, his head was spinning, he wanted, very much, to be elsewhere, to be somewhere he could _breathe_ , the taste of recycled air sharp in his mouth-

His mother was looking up at him, eyes bright, and he could see what she expected, what she wanted. A hug, all forgiven, all forgotten, as if there had never been a Jules, or as if Julian was him. And Julian- He did what people wanted. The script of half his life had said mirror, do what people want of you, be what people want from you, even when the thought makes you taste salt and bile and you want nothing more than to scratch your skin off. His nails dug into the meat of his palm, and he was almost surprised when they didn’t draw blood.

“You may call that love, madam,” Tekeny’s voice cut in, his voice low and grave and grounding. “I should call it selfishness.”

And, just like that, the moment was gone, and Julian’s knees felt as if they were about to give out on him. It was easier than he expected to sit, to sacrifice the high ground. He wondered, vaguely, if putting his head between his knees was an overreaction. Probably it was, besides which he really didn’t think he could deal with _concern_ right now. There were only two things to do at the end of a fight. Either forgive or keep fighting. Usually, Julian chose the former. It seemed…so much neater, somehow, so much easier, when they all knew where the endpoint was, to just forgive and have it over with.

He couldn’t do that now. He couldn’t put this hurt away.

“Julian,” Garak said quietly, hovering over him a little, a hand falling to rest on Julian’s shoulder, just where it met his neck. Julian hadn’t even noticed him moving over.

“I’m fine,” Julian nearly whispered back. “I just-”

He was never at his best after an argument. Not one like this, anyway, which dredged up all the old hurts from where they’d been left to fester, and somehow managed to make them all so much worse.

“Selfishness?” Richard Bashir demanded, taking a sharp step forwards to meet Tekeny halfway. “We risk everything to give our boy a fighting chance and _we’re_ selfish?”

Tekeny drew himself up to his full height. “Yes,” he said shortly. “I believe you are. Julian has made his opinion of what you did to him quite clear. And since he was the victim of this…procedure…it is _his_ opinion, not yours, which matters.”

“I don’t have to defend myself to you!”

“For once, we are in agreement,” Tekeny said coldly. “ _I_ am not the one who has been wronged. But if this is how you treat the son you engineered to suit your wishes, I cannot begin to think you were at all a fit parent to the one that was born to you.”

“And I suppose you have no ulterior motives _at all_ for thinking so,” Richard sneered, “Come on, Jules, you can’t think he’d be this concerned if he didn’t have this creepy surrogate-parent thing with you!”

Tekeny’s nostrils flared at that, and he opened his mouth to snap something back, but Julian was quicker.

“If it weren’t for that, we’d never have known each other,” he said shortly. “So maybe he wouldn’t. That doesn’t make him wrong.”

He felt Tekeny’s eyes flick to him, but…well, Tekeny was too close to this, and Julian had never lied to himself about how their relationship had started. Maybe they would have got along if they’d met as two strangers on the Promenade, but it was for Cesnil’s sake that Tekeny had loved him, even if, somewhere along the way, he had found enough to love in Julian that he would not give the habit up.

Garak was still being quite suspiciously quiet, his eyes fixed on Richard Bashir, a faint, unnerving smile playing around his lips. It was the sort of look that promised a knife in the back at some point in the none-too-distant future.

“We never mistreated him!” Amsha said reproachfully, “We just- Is it so wrong, to want your son to have the best possible future? What would you have done, if it were your son?”

“Anything but that seems like a good start,” Julian said sourly, hating that she hadn’t even thought to address that to him.

Garak’s faint smile had changed slightly, showing teeth. “Perhaps not _anything_ , doctor. There are other ways of forcing a child to grow along certain lines. Many of them quite accepted…at least, within Cardassian culture.”

“We aren’t talking about ‘Cardassian culture’, though, are we?” Richard blustered. “We never raised a hand to Jules!”

“There are other forms of harm,” Tekeny said frostily. “Some of which…some of which I have, perhaps, been guilty of perpetrating myself.”

Julian glanced around at him, startled, but Tekeny did not meet his eyes.

Richard snorted. “Is that right? So why should we listen to someone who actually admits-”

“I find that quite hard to believe, from what I’ve seen of you,” Julian said over him, looking at Tekeny.

His father managed a wan smile. “That is good to hear, but for Cesnil…” he shook his head. “I shouldn’t burden you with all this.”

“It’s not a burden.”

Garak cleared his throat.

“Touching as this little interlude may be, I believe it is not the Legate’s failings which are under discussion here,” he said coldly, turning another falsely-polite smile on Richard and Amsha Bashir. Julian paused. Whatever he might think of them, however much he might hate what they had done to him…he’d never wanted them dead.

“Elim…” he said quietly.

Garak looked over, and gave Julian a reproachful look, as if offended by the very implication that he might have been plotting to do anything unpleasant to either Bashir if they kept on the way they were.

“Finally remembered we’re here, have you?” Richard said nastily. “I don’t know what these people’ve been telling you, Jules, but-”

“They haven’t been _telling me_ anything,” Julian said. He felt, abruptly, very tired. This was- Why did all their arguments go in circles this way? Every time he tried to put it into words, the same evasions, the same accusations, the same furious denial of wrongdoing and guilt-tripping for even _thinking_ that his loving parents would do anything to harm him, when they’d given him everything he had, and everything he might be able to earn, because of course poor Jules would never have been able to earn a life, a place in the world, the right to be respected, to be loved for what he was. The idea that- that he shouldn’t have to _earn_ any of those things in the first place, was something they had never considered.

And yet-

And yet, he could not hate them. He had hated them, once, a long time ago, when he’d been young and angry and overwhelmed by it all, but now…he didn’t hate them. He didn’t love them, either. He didn’t even wish he did, any longer. He felt…hollow, numb, distant. He had come to the end of himself.

“Haven’t they?” Richard demanded, “You’ve never appreciated half of what your mother and me did to give you a decent future – not that you ever took advantage of your opportunities when we’d got them for you – but you didn’t used to go throwing words like ‘abuse’ around either when we both know the worst you ever got from us was a couple of swats when you got out of line! So maybe you’ve come up with this story where you’re the victim in everything we ever did for you, but-”

“Richard,” Julian said, cutting him off. “What do you want from me, exactly?”

Richard snorted. “You haven’t figured that out yet? I want you to get off your high horse and stop acting like we did this terrible thing to y-” He broke off. “And since what do you call me ‘Richard’? Too good for your own dad, is that it?”

“You’ve been saying that for seventeen years,” Julian said, feeling that same odd distance – from Richard, from Amsha, from all of it. “There’s no argument you can make now that you haven’t made before, and there’s nothing I can say that will ever make you understand. You’ve never admitted a failure before, so why start now? That's the way we do things in this family, isn't it? We don't face our problems, we come up with new plans. Don't like your job? Well move along to the next one. Don't like the law? Well, find a way to get around it. But whatever you do, do not accept responsibility.”

Richard snorted. “All those gifts, all those accomplishments, and you still want to behave like a spoiled child. Well you'd better grow up right now or you're going to lose everything!”

“You mean _you're_ going to lose everything,” Julian corrected, without heat. Maybe, maybe in another life he would have stormed, would have raged, but all his rage had burnt out now. Let them have this done. “You're going to lose your only real accomplishment in this life. Me. You said before, I'm your legacy, your proud gift to the world. That was the plan, wasn’t it? And nothing I did, nothing I was, could ever have been enough for you. You changed everything about who I was, you broke every eugenics law on the books, trying to create the son you wanted, and it still wasn’t enough. And nothing ever will be.”

It was a terrible relief, to say it aloud.

“I’m not the son you wanted,” he admitted. “Even with everything you did to me. And I wouldn’t want to be.”

“Jules, we-” Amsha swallowed. “We…we only ever wanted what was best for you.”

Richard rolled his eyes, “Don’t waste your time, Amsha – just look at him. He won’t listen even if you-”

“I wonder where he inherited _that_ from,” Tekeny said sharply, catching Julian’s eye, as if asking for permission. “You’ve said your piece.”

“Don’t you talk to me like-”

“He’s right,” Julian interrupted. “I’ve heard everything you have to say. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d rather spend my last night as a free man with my family.”

They didn’t go quietly. Amsha was crying by the time the door slid closed behind her, Richard was still blustering. It didn’t matter. In the morning, this would all be over, one way or the other.

“Are you all right?” were the first words out of Tekeny’s mouth once the Bashirs were gone.

Julian blinked. “What- Yes. Fine. I’m just…drained, that’s all. Spending time with my- with them tends to have that effect.” He gave a wan smile. “They hadn’t been part of my life for fourteen years before this. I suppose I’m just making it official.” He paused, and then added quickly. “Are you? Stress is a serious exacerbating factor in cases of Yarim Fel, and with everything that’s been going on recently-”

“Quite well,” Tekeny said briskly, which Julian translated as ‘not well at all, but you will never get me to admit it when I’m still worried about you’.

“We should probably begin treatment as soon as possible regardless – as I said, I can make up a list of doctors who should be able to replace me after-”

Tekeny cleared his throat. “Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. As of this afternoon, Regnar- Elim, I suppose,” he amended, rather grudgingly, but then Julian had never expected miracles. “He is family now, after all, and I suppose he has proven he can be trusted so far as you are concerned-” Julian blinked. Garak was staring, but Tekeny ploughed on, apparently undeterred. “-is now in the employ of the Cardassian government-in-exile.”

Julian’s head snapped around so he could look at Garak. “Really? You’re- Does this mean he’ll be able to go home, once the war is done?”

Tekeny nodded, a little stiffly. “If I am in a position to arrange for it, yes. I think I still have enough _vesala_ here to push through an application for provisional Cardassian citizenship, if- if you are resolved not to attempt to fight this through Federation legal channels.”

“…you can’t be serious,” Julian said quietly, looking from Garak to his father and back again.

Garak raised a brow-ridge. “You cannot tell me you would prefer to suffer a manifestly unjust punishment than accept the same situation I did when we married,” he said, sounding frankly exasperated now. “I realise that Federation attitudes may dictate that you should remain and be imprisoned for your parents’ crimes, but considering how thoroughly you have criticised other systems which dictate whole families ought to be punished for the crimes of only a few members-”

“It’s not- It’s never going to work, you know!” Julian rubbed a hand over his face, pacing back and forth. “I’m- It’s not about guilt or innocence. It’s about how dangerous I am to the Federation, and since there’s nothing that will convince anyone I’m not a danger-”

Tekeny cleared his throat. “From what I have been able to find, Federation laws on eugenics only apply to Federation citizens,” he said. “There is a surer way to ensure your freedom, but…” he looked all at once very old, and very tired.

“…you want me to pretend to be Cesnil again,” Julian realised. Or- No, not _want_. Losing the ability to openly search for the son he had lost was the last thing Tekeny would want. But he would do it, if he had to. There was- There was something humbling in that. But at the same time- Julian was human. He knew it for sure now. He was human, and even if he had not been human, he had chosen to live as such. He could not give that up, could not turn his back on it. Becoming an imitation Cardassian, smothering all hints of Julian Bashir, or the Jules that had come before, and being only Cesnil Ghemor until this was over…it would be as much a death of the spirit as the prison sentence Tekeny meant to save him from. For these past two years, he’d walked a middle way, neither entirely human nor entirely Cardassian, and now he found he could not give either side up.

“…it might be arranged,” Tekeny said, with an admirable show of composure. “The Obsidian Order often replaced their targets…or so I am informed.” His eyes flicked to Garak, who smiled innocently.

“No.” Julian met Tekeny’s eyes, then Garak’s. “I- I’m not doing that. We can try the citizenship thing, I suppose,” he added, “But don’t be surprised if it doesn’t work. We’re…well, a government-in-exile can’t expect as many concessions as the real thing.”

“You’re sure?” Tekeny asked, giving him a very searching look. “Julian, if it will keep you out of prison-”

“I’m not going to play a role for you any more than I did for them,” Julian said shortly. “I’m not Cesnil. I’m not going to take over his life too.”

He didn’t think he was imagining the relief on Tekeny’s face at that. Garak looked…less pleased, perhaps, but he- but Julian didn’t know how to make him understand. There was still so much they hadn’t talked about. Perhaps they never would, now.

“There are other forms of security,” Garak said, in the carefully controlled, level voice of the prison camp or the interrogation room. “I realise you don’t want to see Zimmerman killed, my dear, and by now it would only draw more suspicion, but if it could be arranged for you to mysteriously disappear, say, before Starfleet Security arrived to arrest you…”

“I’m not _running_ , Garak!”

Garak clicked his tongue. “I am not suggesting you do any such thing…at least,” he amended, at Julian’s sceptical look, “Not unless all other options are exhausted. It would at least spare the effort of staging yet another rescue, so soon after the last one…”

“Where would I even go?” Julian demanded. “I can’t pull either of you away from what you’re doing here – no, don’t argue with me! You can’t put me above a whole planet, either of you, and I wouldn’t ask it of you if you could!”

“You might go anywhere,” Garak pointed out, “A false name, a few falsified identity records…you cannot believe that to be beyond my abilities.”

Julian rubbed his eyes. “I- No. No, it isn’t. I just- I want this over.” He smiled, an awful, cynical little twist of the lips that didn’t feel like his. “I’ve been hiding for more than half my life now. I can’t live the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. And even if I could…we couldn’t stay in contact with me on the run, not when you’d be the first people investigated in a manhunt. I’d still lose everything. Everyone.”

He might still be able to practice on some distant world, but even that would put him at risk of discovery. He would never be able to speak to anyone who had known Julian Bashir again without putting both him and whichever friends would be willing to maintain contact with a fugitive at risk. He’d spend the rest of his life running. It was more of a life than he had to look forward to in Federation custody, but at just as high a cost. He could lose everything he had or trade it for a form of freedom that was no more than exile under another name. Neither thought appealed to him, but if he had to make the choice…he couldn’t be Richard Bashir over again. He wasn’t going to run and let other people clear up the mess he’d left behind him. If the costs of running had been only his, that would be one thing, but they wouldn’t be. Captain Sisko would suffer enough for having failed to notice an augment in his ranks without Julian’s escape from custody on his station to add to the burden. His friends on the station would come under suspicion of having abetted, even those like Miles whom Julian knew would never think of it. Tekeny and Garak and the Cardassian government-in-exile would have enough trouble from trying to move Julian beyond the jurisdiction of Federation eugenics laws without adding the suspicion of their having aided a dangerous fugitive to their troubles.

“But you would be alive,” Tekeny said quietly.

Julian shook his head. “I’m not- Nobody is going to kill me over this. Not in the Federation. You know we don’t do that. And I’m not- I’m not going to destroy everything you’ve been working for just to save my own skin!”

Tekeny met his eyes. “…it may not come to that,” he said quietly. “You understand…even if we are able to convincingly argue your right to Cardassian citizenship, and to diplomatic immunity, even…the Federation will likely take us at our word. You’ll be exiled.”

Julian’s stomach turned over.

It was not that he hadn’t considered this. Living in exile from the Federation and Cardassia both had been what he expected to be his fate two years ago, if it had been proven that he was Cesnil Ghemor. But perhaps that was the point. Two years ago. Two years, and he’d barely given either possibility a second thought, trying to straddle the line between two worlds, two lives, neither one of them rightfully his.

“I know,” he said. “I…DS9 is a Bajoran station, in law. Starfleet has a presence, but it isn’t _ours_. I’d be able to stay.”

“But…your home,” Tekeny said, looking so honestly concerned it almost hurt to look at.

“Will be lost to him either way,” Garak said. He’d been uncommonly quiet this evening, watchful and wary in a way Julian was not used to from him. “I am sorry, Julian,” he said, reaching out to grasp Julian’s wrist. “But it is true.”

Julian shrugged. Earth…well, Earth had never been where he wanted to live out his life. It had been a long time since Earth had meant anything to him at all. All the same…Richard Bashir’s voice was echoing in his ears. Acting like a spoilt child, he’d said. Was he? He didn’t think he was, but- but this was the second offer he’d received tonight of forestalling the inevitable disgrace tomorrow would bring, and both tasted equally bitter to him.

“I’m not- I don’t want to be ungrateful,” he said awkwardly. It was so much harder to say when it was true. With his- With the Bashirs, he’d never felt the need. He’d never imagined there was anything to feel grateful _for_. Not so here. “But I’m not-” he almost said, ‘I won’t let you’, but even he knew that was the worst possible thing to say. “I can’t make either of you take that sort of risk, just to spare me a punishment that no court in the Federation will be able to say I haven’t earned.”

“Ungrateful,” Tekeny said quietly, and Julian couldn’t make heads or tails of the odd, numbed sound of his voice. “Julian…this isn’t a matter of gratitude. If you truly feel that the only right thing you can do is give yourself up to face punishment for other people’s crimes…” he drew in a breath. “I…well, I cannot say I will accept it easily, but if you intend to refuse my help, I will not force it on you.”

That was….new. Tekeny hadn’t asked permission to offer help or support since that first awkward Reclaiming celebration on Mathenis, the first time Julian had been able to visit him in exile. He tried to catch his father’s eye, but Tekeny’s gaze was still fixed on the door to Julian’s quarters, as if he still half-expected Richard and Amsha Bashir to start hammering the door down with yet more justifications and suggestions and indictments of Julian’s ingratitude.

“I might,” Garak said, rather more prosaically. “According to your own arguments, after all, a trial in which both verdict and sentence have been decided before the accused ever faces an Archon can hardly be counted as a fair or just institution, and from what I have been able to find of such prosecutions…”

“It’s not that bad,” Julian said, “They’ll…I’ll be able to speak for myself, at least. I can’t claim I’m not guilty, but a guilty plea might mean slightly more lenient sentencing…”

“Guilty of _what_ , doctor! Even on Cardassia, _existing_ is not a crime for which one can be convincingly prosecuted-”

“Not officially, perhaps,” Tekeny said grimly, seeming to come back to himself. “And I doubt that will be how it is phrased even here. I had thought you had brought about enough show-trials to know how these things are done.”

Garak looked, for a moment, as if he’d been slapped.

Julian rubbed his eyes. “This is getting us nowhere. Elim- I’m not saying I won’t take help within reason, but smuggling me off the station and out of Federation space isn’t workable without my cooperation, and I’ve already told you I’m not going to spend the rest of my life on the run from the law for a crime I definitely committed – I _know_ my existence isn’t a crime,” he added quickly, when he saw Garak open his mouth. “But qualifying as a doctor and entering Starfleet _is_. Most augments don’t get criminal prosecutions for existing – it’s considered a mental health matter.”

The difference might be a purely academic one, from the horror stories Richard had told him in his teens, when Julian hadn’t yet got the hang of the precise balance of holding back and showing off he needed to keep the secret, but it mattered. Julian’s might just be the most public prosecution of an augment in a hundred years – normally, it was the families responsible who were persecuted, and the augments themselves were quietly shipped off to psychiatric facilities, removed from society before they became a danger to themselves or others.

“A shameful waste of talent, by any reasonable assessment,” Garak said bitingly. “And I was not proposing you go into exile alone.”

Julian stared at him, startled and touched beyond words. “…you’d do that?”

“It is what I pledged myself to do, at our enjoining,” Garak replied, raising his brow-ridges, as if he were merely stating the obvious and Julian was being monumentally thick-headed not to realise as much. “I have not been much in the habit of keeping my promises, but for this one I do intend to make an exception.”

Julian smiled. He couldn’t quite help it. He twisted his hand to press their palms together between them, feeling the skin of Garak’s palms, free of scales, against his own. It was a dream of course, nothing more, but hearing Garak say, with no sign of resentment or ill-will, that he’d refuse the position Tekeny offered, his best hope of a return to Cardassia when the war was done…it was more than Julian would ever have asked of him, more than he could accept, but the offer alone was a better declaration of love than hearing the words ever could be.

Tekeny cleared his throat. “Well, then. With your permission, we will call that settled. I’ll see myself out-”

Julian blinked. “You’re sure? I can walk you-”

“I’m not so infirm as all that,” Tekeny reminded him. “The walk from here to the turbolift shouldn’t prove too great a strain.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Julian muttered. The wounds of the Occupation were less fresh now than they had been when Marritza was stabbed on the Promenade…but they were still there. And with Dukat and Weyoun lurking about, he would rather not leave anything to chance.

He dawdled on the way back across the habitat ring, after leaving Tekeny at his door, not bothering with the turbolift, almost afraid of what he would find on his return. What he found, as it turned out, was Garak, curled on the sofa with a PADD in his lap, looking every bit as drained and afraid and exhausted as Julian felt.

“I suppose I should have seen it,” he said, apparently apropos of nothing, as Julian let the door hiss shut behind him. “I was trained to notice these things.”

Julian looked away. He had thought this discussion was over with. “Most people prefer to believe I’m less capable than I say I am, not more. It’s been useful.”

It hadn’t been his goal, in the beginning, but looking back…that youthful, just-out-of-the-Academy cockiness might’ve been all that kept him afloat this long. No-one had wanted to admit he was even as good as he said he was, let alone better, and risk inflating his head even further.

Garak’s mouth twitched. “That trick I should certainly have noticed. It would be easier if I could blame the implant, but if it were that, I should have noticed as soon as it was deactivated.”

“You knew me by then. No-one wants to believe they’re friends with a monster.”

Even Miles hadn’t accepted it yet, but he would. One of the great benefits of probable life imprisonment was that Julian wouldn’t have to see that moment of realisation first-hand.

Garak sighed. “Doctor. Speaking as one with far more right to that title than you…”

“I don’t need you telling me what I am or am not!” Julian snapped, then drew in a breath, rubbing one hand over his face. “Garak. Let’s- Can we not fight? Not now. Not tonight.”

Garak looked as if he might be about to argue, but then he shook his head.

“Tomorrow,” he said firmly, as if trying to force himself to believe there would _be_ a tomorrow. Probably there would be – Julian would not put it past Garak to break into one of Odo’s holding cells just to have the last word.

Wordlessly, they undressed and fell into bed. If this were a novel, they’d be sleeping together in a much less literal sense right now – one last time before the inevitable – but Julian wasn’t sure either of them was up to it, not after everything else. Garak pressed close against his side, leeching off his warmth, and Julian rested his forehead against the ridges and bumps of Garak’s chufa, and wished morning would never come.

“I’m sorry,” he said, too quietly for anyone not lying there skin-to-skin with them to hear it. “I know it doesn’t change anything, but I’m so sorry. I never meant to cause you any more pain.”

Garak shifted a little. “You have nothing to apologise for, Doctor.”

A lie, but what else was new? Julian gave a soft, exhausted laugh. “And it’s- There’s never a good time for something like this, but so soon after Tain-”

Garak had gone still.

“I never understood why you still loved him,” Julian admitted quietly. “But I know you did. I’ve been so wrapped up in all of this I never stopped to-”

Garak’s hand found his in the darkness, palm to palm. A Cardassian kiss. A holy palmers’ kiss, Julian thought, and had to smother a laugh at the thought of Garak’s expression if Julian were to bring Shakespeare into things now.

“If the worst happens,” Garak said, quite clearly, every word perfectly, carefully enunciated in the way that meant he had forgone the universal translator and was speaking plain Arabic, the language of Jules’ childhood. “I will count myself lucky to have had you. For however short a time.” He paused, and then added, less carefully, in what sounded like English to Julian’s ears, and so was probably translated Kardasi. “Or, more probably, attempt to abduct you from whichever institution they mean to send you to, if you’re so certain that will be the outcome.”

Julian gave a soft, bleak laugh. “And where would we go, do you imagine?”

“I hear the Delta Quadrant is lovely at this time of year.”

Julian managed a rather damp laugh, staring into Garak’s face in the dark. The shine of tapetum lucidum, the clean sweeping lines of brow and orbital ridges, the ornate scaly line of his nose. He wanted to remember this, as clearly as the formula for pi or a line of Shakespeare, or the names of every bone in the human hand. It wouldn’t be enough, not anything like enough.

He’d had seventeen years of freedom. That was more than most like him ever got. Two and a half years ago, he might even have accepted it. But here he lay, with more to lose than he’d ever thought to have in his life, and lose it, it seemed, he would.


End file.
